Kindred Spirits
by pruplup4
Summary: Sherlock is bored. So very bored. Why is no one else bored? Why is no one else like him? It turns out, there is one other person. Mrs. Hudson has a great-niece that moves into Baker Street. She is interesting. And she is bored. So very bored... No romance, except for a slight parody. Rated T for referrals to child abuse, neglect, language and torture.
1. Chapter 1 - Baker Street and the Arrival

A sleek black cab pulled up short, hugging the curb. The door opened to reveal two duffel bags, a backpack and a girl of about sixteen years. After a brief argument with the cabbie, she paid him with 30 pounds and a dirty look, then turned around to face the building of flats in front of her. A narrow building of flats stood wedged between some shops. Its door proclaimed 221B, and the girl checked the street name again just to be sure. Baker Street.

"So this is the place," she muttered, wrapping her coat around herself tightly. She liked London well enough – the people were all right, and the city itself was charming, but it felt cold and unfriendly with its perpetual state of gloomy weather. There really was no place like home.

The girl grinned to herself as she picked up the duffel bags and walked towards the door. _There really is no place like _my _home, anyway._

She knocked on the door, leaning on the doorframe to wait. Mrs. Hudson had a bad hip, after all – would take her a while to get down.

People passing by on the pavement were starting to give her second looks as she waited. Obviously, Mrs. Hudson and her tenants didn't get too many visitors.

But Ebony garnered attention wherever she went. She possessed a strange mix of features, due mostly in part to her mixed heritage. She had choppy straight ebony-black hair, ashy grey eyes, and sculpted cheekbones that gave her a cold, sharp appearance when paired with her white-pale skin.

And although her fifteenth birthday drew near, she gave the impression of a child with her weak-looking build, even though she was lean and strong. It didn't help that she wasn't particularly well-endowed.

Ebony had a strange accent, too; it was mostly British, since she had been born in Coventry, but she had lived in so many countries, absorbed so many local brogues, that it was now impossible to pinpoint exactly her nationality. Scottish, American, South African, German, even Indian – her voice was a unique blend of inflections and lilts. It made her difficult to read, which was how she preferred it.

A thumping noise came from inside the flat, and the door swung open. A mousy-looking woman with a short stature and friendly face peered curiously out the door until recognition clicked into her eyes and she let out an excited squeal that didn't fit her age.

"Ooh! My stars and garters, Ashland Ebony!" Mrs. Hudson enveloped her with a wide grin. Ashland only stood an inch or two over her.

"Why the old lady expressions, Mrs. Hudson?" Ebony asked wryly, a large grin lighting up her face. "You've got a few years left until that stage."

"Oh, you…" Mrs. Hudson swatted her shoulder, beaming, then leaned in and spoke in a conspiratorial sort of whisper. "No, that John decided to start some sort of swear jar business, if you'll believe it. Ludicrous, but I thought to myself, 'Well, look here, old maids like me shouldn't curse like sailors'. That's what I told myself."

"John, your tenant?" Ebony remembered from Mrs. Hudson's letters.

"That's him," Mrs. Hudson clarified. "Him and Sherlock. You'll like John, but Sherlock, well… he's a little _difficult," _she whispered loudly, as if it were an open secret that she daren't say aloud. "But come in, first. You can find out about them for yourself."

Her face was a little worried as she ushered Ebony in, but she smiled sunnily when Ebony glanced at her.

The flat was completely empty, being the flat that Mrs. Hudson could never find a tenant for. It was small, but it looked durable, and it left enough room for Ebony's minimal amount of things. Of course, her shipment of books would arrive soon, but the flat seemed big enough for them.

"All right, dearie, this is your place. I left all the books you left with your mother and all, but that's it, mostly," Mrs. Hudson smiled at her.

There was one bed in bedroom, a study table and a moderately large bookcase with the books mentioned, but empty otherwise. Ebony deposited her things on the bed and turned back to Mrs. Hudson.

"Thanks, Mrs. Hudson –" she began, but before she could get anything else in, she was cut off.

"Oh, goodness, Ashland! No need to thank me. I should thank you, really. I've been without company for a few good years and I'd like young blood around my flat. Young blood that doesn't shoot the living daylights out of my wall, anyway."

"Sorry? Didn't catch that last part." Ebony pretended to be startled, but grinned to herself. She had heard the last part perfectly clearly.

"Oh, nothing. And what's with this 'Mrs. Hudson' rubbish? You really should call me your great-aunt, it's only right, you know. You got it from your mother, I suspect. You really are alike." Mrs. Hudson's cheer seemed to fade as she slipped into thought.

Ebony stayed silent. She hadn't known her mother, as she had died when Ebony was only a year old. She wished she were alive. Her life would've been so much better if she had been there.

"Well, anyway." The older woman was cheerful and sunny once more, clasping her hands together. If only London's weather mirrored her moods. "Since you're not a tenant, give a shout if you need anything. I'll call you up for meals and all – I just thought you'd want a separate flat for a bit of privacy. And it was empty anyway.

"It's a nice gesture," Ebony smiled at her, a little weary. Mrs. Hudson was nice, but she talked too much.

"Well, I'll leave you to it. I'm sure you'll meet John and Sherlock somehow. I'll tell them to drop in, shall I?"

"Anytime," Ebony said. "Not like I'll be busy or anything, now that I don't have school and all."

Mrs. Hudson gave her a friendly wave as she walked out. "Ask if you'd like tea. Oh, and listen, dear." She stopped short in the doorway. "There's a room a little down that way," – she gestured vaguely down the hallway – "that is filled with old furniture and items and things that other tenants left behind. Take anything you need from there, all right?"

Ebony nodded as she sat down. "I'll keep that in mind."

Mrs. Hudson smiled one last time. "Well, all right, dear."

Once she was safely out of earshot, Ebony groaned to herself and massaged her jaws. She hadn't smiled so much in such a short expanse of time in years. She'd forgotten what is was like with Mrs. Hudson – cheerful, light, and lots of insincere smiling.

"Why does everyone smile when no one means it?" she wondered aloud, staring at the ceiling.

"That's what I've wondered since childhood."

Ebony dropped her head to glance at the man in the doorway. He seemed maybe 30 years old or whereabouts, an expression of intense boredom on his face. He was tall and gaunt, with alabaster skin and a shock of curls as dark as hers. His face seemed similar to her own as well – high, sculpted cheekbones with peculiar pallors and shadows, like a Victorian mansion. His eyes were most intriguing, a glasz mixture of green, grey and blue, a weird mix of fierce intelligence and preoccupied thoughts.

"Sherlock Holmes, I'm guessing," she said, nodding in greeting.

He drummed his fingers on the doorpost. "Yes, and I suppose you're the niece Mrs. Hudson was waxing poetic about. How's the book writing going?"

Ebony blinked once, and then dropped her gaze to her wrists. They had indents on them from her late night typing sessions, and the last time she had glanced in the mirror, swollen bags had taken residence beneath her eyes. It was easy to see his reasoning about the book, too, since most teens her age only stayed up late writing books when it was on their own time.

"Not bad, I suppose. It's not a book, though. It's essays."

Mr. Holmes seemed slightly surprised. "You're not impressed?"

She gave him a queer glance. "Should I be? What about?" Then it came to her. "Ah, the deducing?"

A hint of color mixed in with his pale complexion. "Well. Judging by the fact that Mrs. Hudson gave you a flat without rent, you're to live here, yes?" The adept way he ducked the subject didn't go unnoticed, but Ash played along.

"That's right."

"A fair warning, I have strange habits and stranger clients coming in at all hours. You might find it hampering."

"I don't sleep for more than two hours at a time. It's tedious."

Mr. Holmes studied her, seemingly appraising her in a new light. "Don't you have school?"

"I was homeschooled by private tutors. Since I can work at any time it suits me, I finished school a few weeks ago." She looked him dead on in the eyes, which unnerved her slightly, but she was careful not to let him see that. She was careful not to let anyone see anything.

He half-smirked. "No school? Always a positive." Then he remembered something and said, "You were talking to yourself earlier."

"I was."

"I _have_ always wondered that since childhood."

"Social convention is centered around open secrets."

He dipped his head and changed the subject adeptly.

"Your name?"

"Ashland Ebony."

Mr. Holmes nodded to himself, as if confirming something in his mind. "Ebony. Ashland seems tedious. Best be off, then."

And he was off.

Ebony was left wondering what Sherlock Holmes was.

* * *

"Hello!"

It was maybe three hours later, just after tea, when a sandy head popped in through the door of the flat.

Ebony looked up from her bed, not surprised. She had heard the sound of footfalls upon the staircase, and it had been shorter and less hurried than Mr. Holmes' frantic pace.

"Oh, hello. You must be Dr. Watson." She got up and smiled as she walked towards the door, extending her hand.

The rest of the man popped through the door. He was rather short, only about two or three inches taller than her, but he had a friendly, handsome face, with shortly cropped blond-ish hair and interested blue eyes. He looked ordinary, like one might find walking down any London street, but he felt special. He had a weird aura that Ebony couldn't quite pinpoint - he felt, for a lack of a better word, safe.

He was obviously military, with the way he stood and spoke crisply. Wounded in action, probably, and sent home - he didn't seem the type to retire and come home. This was a man with nerves of steel.

"Yes," the man said, smiling as he shook her hand, "but you call me John, all right? I have quite enough of the doctor bit at work."

Ebony inclined her head. "Well, John it is. I'm Ashland Ebony. Most people call me Ebony though." Not that she knew many people or anything. About six or seven in total, perhaps.

"That's an interesting name," John said, looking intrigued. "So you're to live here, yeah? Have you met Sherlock?" He seemed suddenly worried, as if Sherlock were some dangerous predator on the prowl. Which he might be, for all she knew.

"Yes, about 10 minutes after I came, actually," she said. "He's an interesting person. If you don't mind telling me, were you wounded in action or did you retire from the service?"

John stopped short. He stared at her for a second, and then sighed in a resigned manner.

"Good God. Don't tell me you're a deducing genius like that Sherlock. God, he drives me crazy." He shook his head, but he answered her question, which was all she really wanted. "I was wounded. Did you figure that out from my leg or something?"

"Ah, well, you don't seem the type to wimp out and retire from service, is all. Nerves of steel and all that."

He smiled at her. "Well, thanks, I suppose. Anyway, if you need help anytime, don't hesitate to ask, you hear? And come up any time you like. I need some human company from time to time besides Sherlock. He could survive in isolation for years if we let him, if he didn't die of starvation first." He paused and snorted after a bit of thought. "The git probably wouldn't have even realized he was dead."

Ebony smiled. "Can't be all that bad."

John shook his head fervently. "Oh, you'll see." It sounded slightly ominous. "Well, be seeing you, yeah?"

She nodded a goodbye as he left, listening to his plodding footsteps on the stairs. Faintly, she heard an exasperated, "Sherlock!"

It seemed Baker Street would be more interesting than she had previously thought.


	2. Author's Note

Author's Note

Hello, fellow fanfictioners! I realized after I posted the last chapter, I had forgotten to insert any sort of author's note. Forgive me. I am a newbie and have, as of yet, much to learn. Well, anyway, I just wanted to establish some things.

First up: this fanfiction is NOT romance. It does not have Johnlock, or Sherlolly, or Mystrade, or any other sort of ship. It is pure friendship between all characters. If this bothers you, I'm sorry, but you will have to go elsewhere if you wish to read anything of that type.

Second: this story is set directly after The Great Game. I'm going to finish the story at directly-post-Reichenbach and then, once Season 3 finally airs, I will write a sequel, if all goes well and people actually read and enjoy this. I cannot bring myself to actually think up how Sherlock might've - sob - faked his death and, well... you know.

Third: This is NOT any sort of forum to discuss things and attack others' opinions. Be nice. But so saying, I am very open to constructive criticism. Review if you can, and favorite, and follow, and PM me if you have suggestions, yeah?

Fourth: I'm sorry if I don't update enough for your liking. I'll try to update every two to three days, but I'm busy sometimes.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING THIS. It was just some stupid daydream I had and I figured I might as well write it. Thanks.


	3. Chapter 2 - Sherlock and the Tenant

**Greetings! If you are reading this, it means I am succeeding in my quest to take over your mind. **

**See, I'm not actually human. I am an alien sent by my government to observe humans and their weird social conventions so that we can take over Earth. It's kind of failing because I'm an antisocial nerd who has no life except, you know, virtually.**

**In all seriousness, though, thank you so much for reading this. It touches my heart, you know? GAAAAAAAH. THE FEELS. I've been trying to keep Sherlock and John and Mrs. Hudson completely in character, so give me an angry rant (politely as possible) if I fail in this sacred mission, yeah?**

**And, to 42believer: thank you for the review! You're the only one as of now, but still. Better than none. I'm glad you think it's starting out well, and I hope it continues that way. Keep reviewing, and PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE recommend this to others.**

**So, anyway, enjoy the new chapter! Hopefully it's up to your standards? :D**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock. That belongs to BBC, Mark Gatiss, and Steve Moffat. Wish it was mine, though... *wistful gaze into the distance***

* * *

_Footsteps in the hallway. They sound sharp. They sound angry. And Ebony is scared._

_Her body starts to shiver uncontrollably - not with fright, but with a carnal terror. She tries not to scream. That will anger him._

_She is in her bedroom, sitting upright on her bed. She tries not to move, either. He might see her._

_The footsteps stop abruptly. The sudden silence stings her ears. She becomes aware of a sharp intake of breath. Not her own. She breathes silently. From outside._

_She nearly faints with horror. He is closer than she thought. She curls up in a little tight ball on her bed, rocking back and forth, telling herself to calm down. She is trying to take up as little space as possible. And he is right outside her door. _

_There is a moment of calm, of blessed clarity. For that moment, she is not scared. She is serene. And then the door opens._

_He is standing there. He sways. There is a drunken glint in his eyes as he gazes around the room and alights on her._

_She gazes at him fearfully._

_He takes a step forward, but for once he seems unsure. His mouth opens._

_A seed of doubt worms its way into her mind. He never speaks. He only screams. He only destroys. He only hits._

_He looks confused too. Only for a second. His eyes harden. His mouth closes. His hands raise._

_And Ebony closes her eyes. She waits._

_For the horror to begin._

Ebony woke up.

Her head raced until her brain told it that it had been a dream. There was no man. She was not a child. There would be no pain.

She rubbed her forehead, exhaling heavily through her nose. For the last few weeks, she had been having the same dream, over and over again. She wasn't quite sure why; she had never been abused as a child, not physically, anyway. Her father was not a violent man, her tutors had no relation with her, and her servants had been her best friends. She hadn't really known anyone else. The abuse had never happened. The terror, though, the fear... that was not unfamiliar. She knew where that came from.

She looked around herself. She had fallen asleep while documenting her book collection, in an armchair that Mrs. Hudson had given her from the past tenants' items collection ('the lost and found', she had called it). Steinbeck's _Cannery Row _sat on her lap, forgotten.

She glanced at her watch; it was four o'clock in the morning. She had been asleep for roughly five hours. She silently stewed in her chair, berating herself mercilessly.

The reason she didn't sleep was not because it was tedious, as she had coolly informed Sherlock Holmes. Her theory was that if she kept herself going, eventually she would crash, unable to fight off the waves of exhaustion. She would sleep deeply and for a short amount of time. So deep, in fact, that her subconcious could not wander. So deep that she could not have dreams.

Ebony gritted her teeth. She had been doing well - the last time she had slept had been two days prior, but she tried to sleep only once every four days so that she would be thoroughly exhausted. She had broken her streak with this bout of sleep, and thus the dreams had come once more...

She sighed and shook away the last remnants of sleep, getting up and stretching vigorously. _It can't be helped, I suppose, _she thought, staring blankly at a spot on the wall. _Might as well get on with life._

She took the book from the chair and crossed the room, carefully putting it back in its place on the _1940-1949 _shelf. She had a different way of organizing her books from most people - she grouped them by the dates of their original publication. _Cannery Row _had been first published in 1945, so it went in the middle of the shelf.

It had only been a week since Ebony's arrival at Baker Street, but already she considered it more of a home than her childhood mansion already. Mrs. Hudson and John had made her feel completely at ease, and Mr. Holmes... had not done anything. He was interesting though - according to Mrs. Hudson and Ebony's own deductions, Sherlock Holmes was a private eye, or a consulting detective, as he liked to say. John was his sidekick, of sorts, and kept up a blog about their 'misadventures', as Mrs. Hudson had labelled them.

Mr. Holmes was certainly odd; he had all of the eccentricites he had described in their first meeting, and many more. Violin at two in the morning, shooting up the wall (as Mrs. Hudson had muttered about vilely), keeping body parts in the fridge, violent mood swings - it was like living with a pressure cooker that went off at innane, unpredictable times. It was terrifying, it was infuriating, (for John and Mr. Holmes at least) it was exciting, but most of all, it was _interesting. _

He was rude, too, but not on purpose (most of the time). He seemed completely unaware of people's feelings.

Ebony had only met him on a few occasions besides their first meeting, since he was mostly holed up in the flat shouting to his skull or traipsing around London with John, searching for clues. Once had been on the way out of the flat to get some milk for Mrs. Hudson.

She had been pulling on her coat and running out the door simultaneously when she caught a glance of a Belstaff whipping around the doorframe into the hallway. She quickly followed it and found its owner grinding his teeth and muttering to himself as he paced furiously. His back was towards her, but as soon as she ducked her head around the corner, he spun neatly on his heels to face her.

"Yo," Ebony said brusquely. "Haven't seen much of you."

He lowered his gaze down to look at her. She hadn't realized how tall he was till then; at their first meeting, Mr. Holmes had been standing nine to ten feet away from her. Now he was less than two feet away, glancing down at her with a distant air.

"Oh? Ah, yes, Ebony, wasn't it?" His eyes flickered to the door and back, as if eager to leave. "I've been doing experiments. Surely you noticed."

"Of course," she said easily, leaning against the wall. "No cases?"

His eyebrows bunched together, but only for a fleeting second. The distant, impassive expression returned. "No, not of late."

"Well, must be boring."

"A little, yes." It was obvious that he could care less about the conversation. She saw his fingers twitch towards his pocket, probably for his phone.

"Won't be keeping you," she said, suddenly straightening. "Got to get milk for Mrs. Hudson. She went ballistic when I told her that I'd used it all."

His fingers went still. "Used it all? But Mrs. Hudson always has four to five cartons for her tea. ? Unless you're an avid lover of milk..."

Ebony had to keep from smirking. She knew that would interest him. "I was performing an experiment myself. Best be off, then."

And she turned smartly on her heels, just as he had done not five minutes prior.

And now, Ebony stood in the middle of the room, staring at the ceiling. She wasn't quite sure what to make of Mr. Holmes. She wasn't quite sure why she needed to make anything of him.

She knew it wasn't a crush that she harbored for him; she'd never been into that stuff. He made life seem dull without gunshots and adrenaline.

With a sigh, she walked out of the room and up two flights of stairs to 221B. _John might be in, _she mused. _Might as well check he's still sane_

Ebony had been hanging out with John lately, who was glad for the company, and he was a great friend to her already. She had listened to him vent about Mr. Holmes once already, whom John had affectionately labelled 'that old git', and they knew each other as well as old friends.

He had had a lady over last night, though, so she wasn't sure what she expected. It would be interesting, though hopefully not awkward.

She burst in, and was shocked to find a thin figure hunched over the coffee table, muttering to himself and wrenching a pen over papers at light speed.

She stopped, not sure whether she had interrupted something; but he didn't even look up as she entered. He just jabbed fingers at photographs and muttered away, theories and possibilities.

It was peculiar, but it was absolutely _fascinating. _

Obviously John wasn't home, or else he'd be sitting there glaring at Mr. Holmes. Ebony stood awkwardly at the door, then made up her mind and sat down on the couch across from him, watching him work. He was obviously on a case; she could make out photographs of a body amongst the chaos spread over the table, and John had told her about the state he went into while working.

"It's weird - almost like his own little dream world," he had told her one day over tea. He put down his tea cup and started waving his hands in the air, trying to recreate his words. "He just blocks out everything that doesn't need to be noticed and memorizes all the facts he needs. He doesn't take note of anything, just the work and only the work. I swear, there could be a zombie apocalypse, everyone could die, and all he would be screaming about is that the butler did it, not the maid."

It had made Ebony laugh, because no one could be so precise, so _machine-like, _in their ways. But this - this was inhumane_. _She had never seen such a level of concentration in anyone she'd ever heard of, and she had heard of a lot of people, even if she'd never met them.

It was brilliant.

* * *

And so she waited. He was muttering on to himself and she could only hear bits of it, but she managed to piece together the rough story of the murder from the papers spread out in front of him.

A woman had been found murdered in a flat, a gun underneath a mattress that was found next to her. Her fingerprints were all over it, and the evidence pointed to a suicide, except for one thing.

There was another body. It was a double murder.

The man who had been found in the room opposite hers had obviously been dead longer - this Ebony found out from photographs of the body, which more or less resembled a humanoid prune. The two victims were completely unrelated, and according to relatives hadn't known each other, hadn't even seen each other. The woman would have only just gotten off the plane to London at the the alleged time of death. It had been her first forage outside her native country of China. She had been a modern, successful businesswoman there.

The man, on the other hand, was a Edinborough native. He had lived in London for twenty-odd years. He had had a failing restaurant and had ingested copious amounts of alcohol before his death - in other words, he had been stone drunk when he died.

There had been no unusual behaviour before death, no habits disrupted, or strange actions committed. Nothing was out of the ordinary for Chu Wei Huan and Arthur Winsome, aside from the fact that they had been murdered, seemingly for no reason at all.

It was puzzling, to say the least, and Mr. Holmes seemed to share her confusion, although he seemed to be hung up on finding a connection between the victims. He hissed at random intervals and tugged at his hair with an alarming frustration that one could easily find in a toddler.

Eventually, she stopped trying to solve the murder, and started to observe him instead.

* * *

It was two hours later when he finally took notice of her.

Ebony was humming to herself and drawing circles in the air with her arm, trying to do it as fast as she could. It was just one of the many games she had made up when she was younger, when she had been alone for much of the time and had to amuse herself.

"Why are you here?"

She dropped her arm quickly and looked down. Mr. Holmes was crouching in his seat, like he had been for the past couple of hours, but his head was up and his eyes were no longer clouded. She felt vaguely vulnerable somehow - when living in his head, Sherlock Holmes was a harmless entity, but when he was lucid, he was something else entirely.

"No reason," she said. "I was bored, and there was nothing to do. I came up and John wasn't here and it didn't look like you would mind company so I sat down and it was nice and quiet but not in an empty way and I could think properly."

She said this all in a big rush, without thinking, and Mr. Holmes was staring at her strangely at the end of her speech.

"Er, how long have you been here?"

"About two hours?"

He blinked. "I see."

She realized then that he was a little creeped out. "Sorry if I bothered you."

He shook his head as if getting rid of some pesky thought. "No, I didn't notice you, actually."

"Yes, I saw that," she said wryly. Then, a little tentative: "If you don't mind my saying..." She paused.

Mr. Holmes sat up a little and looked at her sharply. It was obvious he thought her intriguing, and that made her feel a little warm. John had explained to her how his mind worked when judging peopler. Sometimes it seemed that's all John did, explaining Mr. Holmes' ways.

"Well?" He said, prompting her.

"Wouldn't the woman have some sort of formal clothing if she was on a business trip? She seemed to be wearing only casual clothing. If it was a professional meeting, she would be dressed formally. So she was meeting someone she trusted."

He looked at her. "Yes, I know."

"The man was the same way."

"Yes..."

"They are connected. They just didn't know it. It's not a connection with each other; it's a connection with the killer."

Mr. Holmes had looked impatient before then; his fingers tapping his knees, his head shaking unconciously from time to time.

And now he was suddenly very still.

He closed his eyes.

He whispered one word aloud; whether to her or to himself, Ebony wasn't sure.

"Brilliant."

And suddenly, he was up on his feet. He grabbed his coat and scarf and ran for the door, but he stopped as soon as he touched the doorknob.

He turned and said to he Ebony, "Coming?"

Ebony was still there on the couch, shocked at his reaction. She thought he would've worked this out. She thought he'd known that. Why was it brilliant? Whjy had he called her brilliant? She wasn't brilliant. She was just Ashland Ebony. She wasn't important. Everyone knew that...

She turned around and glanced at him. For a minute they did nothing but stare at each other.

It was a sight to see - a tall, thin man that waited for none, hand on a brass knob, staring intensely into the eyes of a girl he had known vaguely for a week and talked to maybe three times - and a girl who was paralyzed with shock.

And just as suddenly as he had, she sprang to her feet and said, "Of course." Her eyes glittered as brightly as his.

* * *

Did you expect this, readers? Sorry for the delay - talk to you all later. Have to sleep at some point...

Review, please!


	4. Chapter 3 - Initiation and the Case

**Hello, readers! That's right, it's time for my fictional tirade against the world through the perspective of Sherlock Holmes and company.**

**I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am. Because, quite frankly, I'm tickled. I'm chuffed to bits. (no one gets this reference... it's from _The Messenger, _by Markus Zusak, who also brought to the world _The Book Thief_. Read it.)**

**Well, to voyage past my Aussie-philia, you're in for a long chapter. I'm not sure if it's good or anything (that's up to you to decide) but anyway. I was listening to the _Sherlock _soundtrack while writing for inspiration. It worked, as you can tell.**

**So, thank you for the reviews, keep on doing so, do so if you haven't and on with the show!**

**Also, disclaimer - I do not own Sherlock or any of the characters except for Ebony, who is completely my own.**

* * *

Mr. Holmes smirked down at her triumphantly, like he wasn't surprised at her eagerness, though he obviously was. A skinny dark eyebrow quirked for a second, a tiny detail out of place for the merest moment, but it was still again as he opened the door with a flourish. His eyes were blazing with a fire, the likes of which she had never seen before.

"Come on, then." And he turned and ran, coat lapels billowing.

She paused for a nanosecond at the most - no time for thinking with this man, obviously - before going after him. He hadn't even looked back to check she was with him, so that meant it was every person for themselves when Sherlock Holmes was evidence-gathering.

They flew down the stairs (more like Mr. Holmes flew elegantly over the woodwork, and Ebony tripped over herself trying to emulate him) and Ebony could hear Mrs. Hudson distinctly: "Sherlock, don't be out too late!" She sounded vaguely resigned.

Holmes ignored her - probably hadn't even heard her - as they ran into the street. He raised his hand and almost simultaneously conjured a cab out of the mass of swirling vehicles that was Baker Street traffic, even at (_wh__at time was it_? Ebony consulted her watch surreptiously) 12 o'clock at night.

Come to think of it, why was Mrs. Hudson awake? As she slipped into the cab, Ebony glanced over her shoulder at 221A and saw lights flickering from the window. Ah. That explained it. Late night crap telly. John had informed her of the brief period Holmes had been hooked onto the crap television Mrs. Hudson watched. Apparently he had stopped, but not before he had nearly given himself an ulcer (and a tumor on the side) trying to prove the talking pictures on the screen wrong. Since they couldn't respond, it had obviously been a futile exercise.

She heard Holmes murmur an address to the cabbie, but she didn't quite catch it. The cabbie muttered his assent and the car started to move, the purr of the engine blending in with the symphony of late night traffic.

Ebony glanced over at Holmes to see him furiously texting away, the small digital screen reflecting in his flat, emotionless eyes. She thought about asking him where they were going, but decided against it; she would figure it out in due time.

If there was one thing she knew about herself, it was that she was a patient individual, almost to the point of insanity.

However, Holmes had decided that it was probably best for her to know what was going on, lest they stumble right into a criminal hideout. This was alright with John tagging along, because he was an adult, but a child... He clicked the phone off and turned to her.

"As you have displayed, you are informed of the nature of this crime." He paused here, perhaps to permit her to inform him otherwise, but he hurried on when she remained silent. "This cab is headed for a warehouse on the edge of London, directly across from the flats in which the bodies were located."

She understood immediately. "The victims weren't killed in the flat."

He allowed his mouth to quirk into a grim smile. "Precisely."

It all clicked into place, suddenly - she hadn't realized, but something had seemed out of whack, a puzzle piece that she hadn't known existed missing from the picture.

For one, the official police report had said the victims had been murdered in the flat itself... but then why did the bodies show signs of water damage? They weren't noticeable, granted. A bit of mold, slightly soggy skin. They had nothing to do with the cause of death, so they weren't included in the autopsy. They weren't important.

A careless assumption. Everything was important in a crime.

The bodies had not decomposed, and had been dry when they were found. This meant two things: they were only in the water for a short amount of time, maybe thirty seconds at the most, and that the water source was nearby.

There was a small river seperating the warehouse and the flats. It all fit.

"So they were shot in the warehouse, taken to the flat, somehow fell into the river along the way, and were disposed of there. The killer made it look like a suicide, and left." Ebony snuck a glance at Holmes's expression to see how she'd done - completely blank. She couldn't read him at all. Strange. Most people were like open books to her.

"Not bad," he conceded, "but one thing was off.

"It wasn't made to look like a suicide. The killer wanted very much to be known."

"How?" Ebony realized that she was unconciously leaning forward, her hands clasped around her knees, as if for support.

"Well, for one, the murder weapon used was an automatic firegun, using a .357 magnum cartridge. These types of guns eject shell casings when shot, and the killer wouldn't have had time to clean up after himself if he had shot them in the flat. And the .357 shell casings are quite large, at 1.3 inches length, not to mention that they are bright gold and glint in the light, making them quite noticeable. If the killler had shot them in the flat, there would have been two shell casings.

"There were none found."

Ebony sat back with a huff. "Well." She gave a sardonic half-smile. "That's the frailty of genius. It needs an audience."

Holmes froze suddenly, and somehow Ebony sensed that she had struck a nerve with her comment. His face was blank, and yet he seemed a little startled. As if she had shattered some sort of image that he had fitted to her. As if she was utterly unprecedented.

They spoke no more until they reached the warehouse.

* * *

The warehouse was a low, flat slab of concrete, unremarkable when compared to thousands of other such buildings across England. Unless all other warehouses were scenes of murder.

They paid the cabbie (Holmes did, anyway) and hopped out. Holmes set forth at his usual brisk pace, Ebony scuffling after him. He looked so cool in his flowing black coat and casual gray suit. She looked all right, with a strange combination of a floppy purple sweatshirt three sizes too big and the nicest dress pants money could buy, mostly out of habit (her father had given her this weird habit of dressing at least half-formally at all times).

As they walked across the darkened parking lot, Ebony could make out two figures against the building's silhouette. One was a familiar, sandy-haired one: a relaxed John. He looked for all the world as though he was often woken up at twelve o'clock at night and instructed to drive to abandoned warehouses. Then again, he probably was.

The other one, silver-haired and tired-looking, was unfamiliar by sight, but Ebony could guess that he was the man John and Holmes referred to as Lestrade. Detective Inspector Lestrade; John had told her about him. He was obviously the victim of a failing marriage, if one went by his rumpled jacket which was in desperate need of a wash.

"This'd better be good, Sherlock," Lestrade grumbled, barely stifling a yawn. He didn't notice Ebony directly behind Holmes, but John nodded at her in greeting before walking up to Holmes.

"You're right. I found the bullet cases in the corner and a bit of discoloration on the floor. It could be bit off as old chemicals from the lab that used to be housed here, but it looks like fresh blood to me." He murmured this to Sherlock before backing away.

Holmes gave him a slight nod as a thank-you before turning to Lestrade and smirking in a self-satisfied way. "Oh, it is," he said. "I wouldn't have disturbed one of the few nights that you could get to sleep for nothing, you know."

Lestrade colored slightly but sighed resignedly. "I'm not going to ask how you knew that. Just tell me if you've found something out."

Holmes grinned - not in a happy way, but more in a morbidly triumphant way, as if he had just won a race and he was about to gloat mercilessly to the loser's face. "This warehouse is where Mr. Daniel Stanislaus murdered Chu Wei Huan and Arthur Winsome."

Suddenly, in the moment of silence before everyone reacted, Ebony had a vision of Sherlock Holmes, the wizard.

Because that's what he was - he figured out the secrets the world had to offer him, coaxed them out with a bit of observation and timed abducing, and he painted them in mystery while he got it sorted. Like magic. He gave the impression of being a behind-the-scenes worker, just the man pulling the ropes, but he was a performer, really. He faltered without an audience, but he reveled with a spotlight.

And the way he revealed his deductions - with a flourish, with a touch of mystery and allure - that was his act, his performance.

It was his get-out-of-jail, scot-free card.

Sherlock Holmes was a pompous prick, but he was a wizard.

She grinned to herself in the split second that she thought of all this, and it didn't go unnoticed. Holmes sent her a quizzical frown, which Lestrade noticed in turn. He turned to follow his gaze, giving a double take when he saw Ebony standing there.

"Sherlock, you can_not _bring a child here!"

"It's not a crime scene, nor is it a point of interest," Holmes said brusquely. His mouth hardened into a thin line as he rotated slowly to Lestrade. "Therefore, I can bring whomever I wish. And anyway, I'm sure Ebony would not take kindly to being called a child."_  
_

They turned towards her, Holmes' eyes glinting. _Oh, you evil, evil man, _Ebony thought grimly, trying to give him a death glare without it being obvious. He responded with a dismissive smirk. _Shifting the blame onto me without making it seem so. Clever._ There it was again, cleverness - his scot-free card.

Truth was that, unlike most teenagers around the pivotal age of 15, Ebony didn't much care about what people called her, as long as they didn't treat her condescendingly.

But then there was also the fact that he was indirectly defending her, right? Or was it defending his own decision to bring her there? Either way, she had three men staring down at her, waiting for some reaction of some sort.

"Erm, well, that's not the point right now, is it?" She said innocently, pasting on a winning smile. "Who's Daniel Stanislaus?" She knew perfectly well who he was, but that wasn't the point either.

John saw where she was getting at and gave her a boost. She thanked him silently. "The name sounds familiar. Hasn't he been in the papers recently, minor offence or something like that?"

Holmes seemed disappointed that he hadn't caused her to sweat under the attention, but he turned to John and answered. "He got into an argument with a bus driver over some change and the driver ended up in the hospital with a bloody nose and a bad temper. No charges pressed, but he was reprimanded. A week later, Mr. Stanislaus got antsy once more, it seems, and he was charged with possession of illegal substances. Nothing major, not even a full gram of cocaine, and he told the police where he got it, so no charges pressed again."

"But who _is _he?" John pressed. "What does he do?"

"He's a sailor," Ebony suddenly cut in, and Holmes glanced at her, slightly miffed at stealing his show. "Of sorts. He runs a business on the river that runs between the flats and the warehouse. It's kind of like a rent-a-car thing for people who want to take their significant others out to propose to them in a quasi-romantic setting that isn't too expensive, or for anniversaries and stuff..."

Her eyes widened at the same time as she realized what the connection was. It took John a little while longer, but he had been around Holmes long enough to figure it out. Eventually his mouth formed a small _o _as he whispered:

"_Oh. _Chu Wei Huan and Arthur Winsome. _Oh."_

Lestrade looked back and forth between them, starting to get irritated at being left out of the loop. "Look, one genius is enough at one time, yeah? At least one of you tell me what's so fascinating about this!"

Holmes seemed more than happy to explain. He inclined his head slightly and began prattling at light speed.

"Chu Wei and Arthur Winsome were of completely different social classes and nationalities. They had no reason to be related, as Ebony here brought to my attention." He admitted this grudgingly, and Lestrade and John glanced at her, both with different expressions. John looked vaguely vindicated, as though something he had thought of had been proved correct, whilst Lestrade looked slightly petrified at the thought of another deducing genius in London to take care of.

"Arthur Winsome worked at Daniel Stanislaus' company, but only for the last two months. He was a hand on one of the ships that Stanislaus had recently hired on. Therefore, he was listed as a worker under the boat, not the company. Chu Wei Huan had rented the boat because she had come here for a little jaunt with her significant other, as you tastefully put it, Ebony... Mr. Stanislaus himself."

They all stared, Ebony included.

"They were having an affair. It would take too long to tell you how I figured this out, so I shall continue. This little business of Stanislaus' was a cover for a drug business. Don't guffaw, Lestrade, it was cleverly hidden beneath corrupt policies and permits. Winsome figured it all out. He tried to uncover Stanislaus' business, get it all official.

"You see, Winsome also has a side job... as a bus driver, and if you look closely, the body shows signs of an old nosebleed."

Lestrade swallowed. He had seen so many cases, cleverly plotted out, unraveled so easily by this man, but it still amazed him. "But why was Chu Wei dead, then?"

"Stanislaus had a string of exotic lovers, Lestrade... this woman was simply another notch in his belt. It made no difference to him whether she lived or died, if she was an obstacle in his path, away she went." Holmes made a gruesome little _off-she-went-like-in-a-fairy-tale _gesture. "He invited her on board, but she came too early. She wanted to surprised him, perhaps. Remember how she cancelled her flight and got an earlier one? He was in the middle of a deal, and she walked in. She saw him. She probably ran out in horror - innocent little thing from China, she didn't understand how the international game went just right, did she? Winsome was already on Stanislaus' tail, and he was right outside the door. He got in the middle of it. Stanislaus finished the deal and went to make a deal of another kind - the deadly kind." While he was talking to them, regaling them, he was waving his hands around, scrunching his eyebrows, dropping his voices at all the right places. _He could be a storyteller, too._

_"_He talks to her, makes her comfortable in the warehouse. Makes it look like she's another drug dealer to Winsome, who's tailing them. Lures Winsome in. He kills them. He drags the bodies to the flat in one of his boats, probably the small one docked at the pier near the flats, and they get slightly wet. He puts them in the flat. He wants it to be a message." Holmes stopped and took a deep breath as his prattling ended.

Then he smiled a disturblingly large smile for a man who had just solved a murder.

"Ah, that was entertaining. Inform the police, Lestrade. John and I will be off, and seeing as you are a young girl, Ebony, and this is London at midnight, you'd best be coming along." He turned smartly on his heels and strode away, back towards the main road.

_Bravo, Mr. Holmes, _Ebony thought to herself as she and John scrambled after him. _Bravo, indeed._


	5. Chapter 4 - Anticipation and the Package

**Ah, I'm finally getting the chance to upload! **

**Don't worry, readers, I have not ventured into that despicable land of 'sudden hiatus'. I'm not ****_that _****mean. I have been worrying my freckle off all week because I haven't had the chance to write anything, and when I did, something always got in the way of uploading - damn you, insufferable Internet access.**

**Good Lord, this chapter is a long one. I hope it makes up for the unscheduled hiatus. Also, a heads up on the story format for the next three chapters - this will be a time skip, and then there will be two chapters of a flashback (maybe three). You'll see why soon enough.**

**And speaking of which, here it is! Hope you enjoy it, and please review if you have any suggestions (but be nice).**

**Post-note: The village mentioned in this chapter is actually real - at least, according to Wikipedia it is...**

**EDIT: I realized that later on, the whole thing where Sherlock tells Ebony not to call him 'Mr. Holmes' won't fit the story. So I changed that part and now the two seem much closer than before. Sorry about that, I should've caught that before posting it.**

* * *

It had been mid-August when Ebony arrived at Baker Street, and now it was mid-September – six weeks since her arrival. The temperature, which had peaked around 28 degrees, had taken a sharp turn, and now Holmes really did have to use that Belstaff of his. At the present moment, it was raining buckets, but most of the Londoners were properly equipped for battle with their long-suffering umbrellas and raincoats.

Ebony was stationed at the window, like she had been all morning, curled up in a ball on a chair she had dragged up across the room. Her arms were tightly clasped around knees that drawn up to her chest, her chin resting on her kneecaps and to observers, it looked as if she were getting ready to jump up at a moment's notice. But she was only waiting.

For what, though, only she knew. She had come up there at seven in the morning, said hello to John and proceeded to start her vigil. He had tried to question her, but she had only looked at him and turned back to the window. Eventually he sighed and gave up. _She's so much like Sherlock, it's scary, _he thought to himself grimly as he set down a teacup beside her. It had been four hours and the tea had long since gone cold.

From the window in 221B, Ebony could see all of Baker Street. With all their umbrellas and briefcases and similarly colored suits, the people scurrying about on the road reminded her of mindless drones, off to their mindless jobs. Their existences were so boring, so mundane, so… _predictable. _How could they stand it?

She was in the middle of her musings on this very topic when she caught sight of what she was waiting for – a chunky brown delivery lorry squeezed between a cab and a Mercedes.

She leapt up suddenly, causing John to give a frightened start and turn towards her. She was staring out at something most intently, eyes glittering. John was completely flabbergasted - in all the time she had lived at Baker Street, Ebony hadn't expressed much emotion, but he could tell that she was excited down to her socks.

"Eb?" he asked tentatively, using the nickname he had come up with for her. When he had first used it, she hadn't protested it, but instead given him a startled sort of look. He supposed that no one had bothered to give her a nickname before. "Everything all right?"

Ebony turned to him, her expression vague, as if she hadn't quite heard him right. "Oh, everything's coming up roses now, John," she said. "Everything's coming up _roses_."

She gave him a sudden, slightly maniacal grin, and with that, she turned and ran down the steps to meet the lorry.

John was left standing there in bewilderment, wondering whether he would ever know truly what went on in Baker Street.

* * *

Ebony waited impatiently at the door of the flat for the deliveryman, dancing from one leg to another. Usually she wasn't so antsy (not noticeably, at least) but this package was something special, even more important than her books.

She had a clattering and footsteps behind her, and she turned around, even though she knew it was Sherlock from his pace. He was standing motionless on the stairs, eyebrows raised at her impatience.

"Sherlock," she greeted him, wondering briefly where he had been all morning, but she turned back to the door before the words tumbled out of her mouth.

"Ebony. Is there a reason you are switching your center of balance from one limb to another with alarming regularity? Bathroom issues, perhaps?" He was completely straight-faced, but she knew he was teasing her. She had heard him make remarks of the same disparaging tone to John on multiple occasions.

"Oh, shut up, Sherlock," she said a little dismissively. He smirked at her response, and complimented himself on his timing - if she had had more attention to spare him, she would've come up with a better comeback.

There was a knock at the door then, and she heaved it open almost immediately, startling the deliveryman. Behind him was a trunk made of a beautiful, rich mahogany.

"Er…" The poor man stood on the doorstep staring at them for a mere four seconds before regaining his senses. The model of efficiency. Or maybe he just met a lot of weirdos on his job.

He glanced down at his clipboard before looking up at them again. "I have a delivery for a Miss Ashland Ebony?" His eyebrows crinkled as he took in the young, rather weak-looking girl in front of him. He tried to ignore the man with sharp eyes behind her – he was rather intimidating.

"Right, that's me," Ebony said, trying not to jump up and down in childish excitement. She had waited days, _weeks, _for this package. She wasn't sure how she had lived without it.

The deliveryman casted her a doubtful glance, but he shrugged to himself. Hey, she looked innocent enough, and it was almost lunch break anyway.

He sighed and turned his clipboard around, handing it to her. "Sign there, at the bottom," he said, pointing, before turning and lifting the heavy trunk with a grunt.

Ebony scrawled her last name with a disinterested air, eyeing the trunk with an almost hungry glint in her eye. It surprised Sherlock, who was still standing behind her, who was curious as to what the trunk could be. Something beloved, obviously, because he hadn't seen Ebony express this much emotion in her time at Baker Street.

Judging by the shape, weight and the careful way the man was heaving it, it was something fragile – perhaps it was… a piece of sports equipment? Wait, of course, it wasn't. Sherlock almost laughed aloud. _Stupid, stupid – answer's clear as day, _he thought, berating himself.

The deliveryman set the trunk carefully down inside the doorway. "I trust you can carry it the rest of the way, yeah?" He sounded as though he really couldn't be bothered.

"Yes, thanks," Ebony said. "Do I need to pay you?" She had her hand on the handle of the trunk, leaning away from the door, ready to shoot up the stairs at a moment's notice.

The man blinked and shook his head slowly. "Er, well, it was taken care of already, by a Dr. Ebony… but a tip wouldn't be too unwelcome," he added hopefully.

Sherlock noticed that as soon as the deliveryman mentioned the doctor, Ebony stiffened ever so slightly, as if the name caused her physical pain. She turned her head and glared at the deliveryman sharply, but he was completely oblivious to her discomfort, only gazing towards her in hopes of a tip.

She sighed inaudibly and said (in a rather subdued tone, Sherlock thought), "Yes, of course. Thank you for the delivery." She put the trunk down gingerly and patted her pockets before making a face. She obviously didn't have any money to give the man.

Sherlock immediately pulled out a crisp five-pound note and handed it to the man, who gazed at it wide-eyed, obviously having never received such a generous tip. He bowed quickly, muttering a reverent thank-you.

Ebony frowned and turned to him. "You didn't have to do that, you know."

Sherlock looked down at her. "I was curious as to what that is," he said expressionlessly, motioning to the trunk. "I have a sneaking suspicion, but nonetheless…"

She considered this for a minute. "Well, thanks, I guess." She paused. "I don't like being in people's debt," she admitted after a moment. "The minute you go into debt, you lose your freedom. That's something my father said. He said a lot of things, but that was the only one I bothered remembering."

Ebony wasn't sure why she was telling him this, and by his expression, neither was Sherlock. Apparently, he was wont to tell her in his usual blunt fashion.

"Was there a point to that story?"

"Not particularly," she admitted.

Sherlock sighed dramatically. "If you're only going to tell me _useless_ stories about your family's ideologies, then I shall be going upstairs." He turned and stalked up the stairs, the picture of boredom.

Ebony rolled her eyes and called after him, "Weren't you interested in the package?"

His response floated down the steps, right on the tail of her asking. "No! I already know what it is!"

"Is that so?"

His head popped back around the staircase, smirking at her. "It _is _so. Now come upstairs so that I may prove myself right." Then he disappeared once more.

She grumbled to herself and ran up the stairs, lifting the heavy trunk as though it were no more than a trinket.

John had vanished to his bedroom after Ebony had left, but now he wandered back into the living room as she came up the landing, wearing an expression of mild interest.

"Oh, what's this?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

"You'll see," she said happily, laying it down gently on its side. She carefully unlocked the clasp on the handle and opened the wooden trunk. Sherlock, who was sitting in the chair Ebony had inhabited all morning, threw her a casual glance over his shoulder, trying to hide his interest.

There lay was a cello case made of a smooth, gray metal, its delicate contour hand-crafted to accomodate the curves of the instrument inside. Ebony lifted it out with a practiced hand, one arm underneath the case as a support, the other caressing the case with an almost loving touch. She placed it on the floor with a huff, as though relieved it hadn't blown up in her face.

It was rather the way Sherlock handled his violin - that is, until he started sawing away at it.

Ebony opened the case with a click of the metal clasp, and gently, ever so gently, lifted the instrument out of the case.

Even John, who was not a cello connoisseur, sucked in a deep breath, completely awe-struck. It was one of the best cellos money could buy - _vintage, by the looks of it, _Sherlock mused - and hand-crafted, like the case. The body was a piece of art, a pure, exquisite hunk of hollowed maple. The bow was equally peerless in its composition, though it was made of spruce, not maple.

However, while the cello was obviously well taken care of, it had an overall air of disuse. The bow was resined, the body was varnished, and the strings were tuned, but to Sherlock, the instrument had been out of use for so long that it seemed to almost _reek _with neglect. It seemed, for lack of a better word, forlorn. Lonely.

It seemed Ebony wouldn't let it go any further - she immediately took the cello and sat down in the nearest chair. She paused before dragging it experimentally across the strings. The sound reverberated within the instrument's hollows, pure and whole.

She looked up at Sherlock and grinned. "Was this what you were expecting?"

He had stood up when the cello had been removed from its case; now he stood motionless, eyes half-closed, head tilted slightly as he listened to the note she had played, judging the quality of the instrument.

He opened his eyes as the sound died in the air, but he still did not move. He considered her.

"I did expect a cello, but..." He swallowed, and to Ebony, it looked as if he was fighting an internal battle. Probably his ego. "I must admit that I did not expect something of such calibre. The timbre of the instrument is astounding... vintage, mid-to-late 1800's, a German maker, I presume?" He quickly brushed aside his admission of ignorance with his usual fast-paced deductions, fixing her with an analytical stare.

_Of course he wants to cover up the fact that he didn't know something with a bit of cleverness, _Ebony thought, stifling a smile. It was rather what her brother would have done.

"That's right," she said, gently plucking the strings. It had been so long since she had touched this cello. It had been her refuge while living with her father for so long - her only refuge, after Lucien had left.

John cut in. "So you play the cello?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and turned back to the window, already bored with the conversation. "Obviously," he mumbled. "Really, John, I would've thought your knack to state the obvious was disappearing with my influence." John ignored him steadfastly.

Ebony stifled another smile. "That's right," she answered, mirroring her earlier remark. "I've been playing for ten years."

John's eyebrows shot up. "Ten years? Since you were... five?"

"About, yes. It's a tradition for women in my family to play some sort of stringed instrument. Most choose violin, but I was the first in about six generations to choose cello. I inherited a vintage cello from a German ancestor of my mother's, who was a cello maker." She directed this last remark to Sherlock, who did not react except to smirk slightly to himself.

John sighed and put his head in his hands, wearing a long-suffering look. "Well, that's lovely, but... do tell me that the both of you won't play accompanying horrors at two AM."

Ebony chuckled, sounding (not-so-surprisingly) like Sherlock. "Ah, no, I would never abuse the cello like _that_." She could see Sherlock stiffen with indignance in her peripheral vision, but before he could turn around and start a tirade about it wasn't _abuse, _it was music, she continued. "I asked my father to send it to me from his estates in Devon."

"Devon?" Sherlock said, suddenly interested. "Your father resides in Devon?"

"Obviously," John said in an airy tone, mocking him with the same dismissive tone Sherlock himself had just used. "I guess my - what was it, now?_ - knack for stating the obvious_ has rubbed off on you."

Sherlock scowled at him, but made no further comment, instead focusing on Ebony's answer.

"Yes, the family has lived there for ages. Why?"

"I have been to Devon on cases. There was only one noble family in the area, the type you seem to hail from."

Ebony felt her blood run cold. Sherlock had an inkling of who she was.

She had to figure out how to ensure that it stayed only an inkling.

Living at Baker Street for a month heightened anyone's observation skills considerably, and seeing as Ebony was already a person of far-above-average intelligence, she had noticed things. Anyone would have. For example, how Sherlock never let go of something that interested him until he worked out all of its inner workings. If something was interesting, he had to know what comprised it. He had to know what made it tick. Once he had learned how to make duct-tape wallets on the fly for a case, and had fainted from dehydration because it had taken him so long to figure out how to tape wallet flaps back-to-back

And if he got the suspicion that something was off with Ebony, he would not rest until he figured out what it was.

As in literally.

He would not rest.

At all.

He would probably keep himself going until he got a _Eureka! _moment and crawl to her on the floor of his laboratory (he didn't have one, but for creative purposes, Ebony made one up for him in her daydream) and grab her pant leg and hiss up at her, eyes glinting one last time, her secret on his dying breath and then collapse.

Her daydream was so in-depth that she almost made herself cry until she realized where she was and what was happening.

Sherlock was looking out of the window, interested again. John noticed his expression and perked up from his armchair.

"Client?"

"It might be... there's a limousine. Black. Expensive." Sherlock squinted. "Appears to be heading here. Doesn't look like Mycroft."

Ebony scrambled to her feet and bolted to Sherlock's side, her eyes wide as she gazed out the window. He shifted to accomodate her, eyebrows raised as he looked down at her quizzically. He heard the breath go out of her. That probably meant she was shocked. Why was she shocked? Why would she have reason to be shocked if a limousine came to Baker Street? Something from her past?

John attempted to resist the urge to look as well for all of three seconds, then conceded with a sigh and got up to join them at the window.

The limousine did indeed stop by 221. The door opened and a chaffeur appeared. To Ebony, he looked a little familiar.

He approached the door, looking uncertain and slightly guilty. Ebony noticed a thick package in his hands, not exactly a box, but more of a thick, padded envelope. The chaffeur checked the address on the box and the door, getting increasingly on edge by the minute as Ebony, Sherlock, and John watched. He raised a gloved hand to the door, hesitated, and then, seemingly gaining a surge of confidence, knocked.

Sherlock could've sworn he'd seen a trail of dust lift after Ebony as she zoomed down the steps.

The door flew open for the second time in five minutes. If it had been any other man, he would've been absolutely knackered at the response time for the knock, but this was no normal chaffeur.

This was Freddy Wilkinson, and he was an Ebony chaffeur.

The tall, lanky young man looked up, eyes uncertain, until he saw a young girl with an equally unsure gaze. For a moment, they only stared, until Freddy broke out into a grin.

"Ash! It's you!"

He swept her up in a hug, which she returned (to some extent - she wasn't much for physical affection) after a shocked second, swinging her around a good three or four times right there in the doorway. After putting her down, he laughed as he looked her up and down.

"Goodness, yer lookin' happier than all the times I've ever seen ye. London seems ter be suitin' ye well."

"It's not bad. But Freddy - why are you here?"

"Left with nary a goodbye, didn't ye?" Freddy said to her in an accusatory tone, though his eyes were affectionate. "Had to say a proper farewell, didn't I? We all miss ye, Ash, we really do. It ain't the same without ye." He was forlorn for a long moment, until he looked down and remembered the package he had brought. "Oh, a'course! And then there's this. Mrs. Brixton found this while she was cleanin' out the attic, she did. Papers, they are. But that's all I know fer sure. She sends you her love."

He handed her the package carefully. Ebony stared down at it - even if they were only papers, they had to weigh a good three to four kilos. She wondered briefly why the Ebony housekeeper thought it fit to send Freddy all the way to London just to deliver some papers, but she pushed it out of her mind. Mrs. Brixton had a good reason for everything. Ebony would figure it out in due time.

"Heavy, innit?" Freddy said, breaking into her thoughts. "Wonder what's in there... paper bricks? Anyway, I have ter be off, Ash. I only managed ter slip away on my break and get this to ye. If I mailed it, yer dad would find some way ter be interferin' with the mail, yeah? Be seein' ye soon, then." He hesitated, then bent and gave her a kiss on the cheek, just like the older brother she had always considered him to be.

"Take care of yourself, Freddy."

"Always, Ash."

With a tip of his hat and a jaunty grin, Freddy turned and slipped into the limousine. She watched it vanish amongst the traffic, before slowly shutting the door and plodding up the steps.

Sherlock and John were still at the window, having seen all that had conspired. John looked completely nonplussed, his eyes wide as he turned to look at her, while Sherlock looked like his usual apathetic self. He fixed his gaze on her as she entered the room.

"Eb? Who was that?" John blabbered, trying to keep a level head (and subsequently failing). "What just happened? Are you sure that wasn't some stalker and there might be a bomb in that, be careful-"

"It's not a bomb, John, don't be absurd," Sherlock cut in, sounding irritated. "It was obviously a young man she knew." He didn't try to mask his intense stare. Ebony tried not to flinch - the sharp tone of his voice hurt like a sword, almost physically. "Wasn't it?"

Ebony avoided the question and instead answered one neither of them had asked. "I don't know what's in the package. Freddy only said they were papers." She looked down at it. "Shall we open it and see?"

John looked at the package for a moment as well, calmed down enough to say, "Well, if you're _positive _it's not a bomb, then why not?"

Sherlock said nothing.

They all stared at the package until Ebony took ahold of the string that tied it and tugged on it gently. The envelope opened, and a thick sheaf of papers, about fifty of them or so, sat in her hands. A pink memo sat on top.

She stared down at it.

John suddenly sensed her discomfort at being in the limelight. He turned to Sherlock and said, in a falsely cheery voice that fooled no one, "Hey, Sherlock, how about a cup of tea?"

Sherlock saw right through the attempt at once, but he was thirsty, and Ebony seemed very uncomfortable at opening the package. He nodded to John and allowed himself to be lead away, shooting her a look as he passed her into the kitchen.

_Good old John, _Ebony thought fondly, focusing on the package again, now alone. _He always knows what to do._

_"_You want some tea, Ebony?" John called.

"I'm good," she responded absently, fingering the pink memo. Cheap, flimsy paper, covered with a hurried scrawl. Mrs. Brixton's handwriting.

"Hey, I'm going back down," she called suddenly, turning to the door. "I'll see you later, John, Sherlock." Her voice was vague as she stepped out of the flat.

"What? Ebony, are you alri-" John stepped back into the living room, only to find himself talking to an empty room. He huffed to himself and walked back to the stove, mumbling to himself about how he never knew what went on.

Sherlock sat at the kitchen table in a stony silence, listening to the sound of Ebony's footfalls on the staircase.


	6. Chapter 5 - Boredom and the Pathologist

**Ahhh! Flashback time!**

**Not much more to say, other than thank you for reading. I've already starting writing, like, the next three chapters. So yes.**

**And and and: MOLLY APPEARS! She's a very easy person to get OOC because we haven't seen that much of her in the shows, if you think about it, except for her stuttering herself mindless around Sherlock... So I was nervous about writing her in, but she kind of has to be here, right?**

**Disclaimer: I own only the plot... and my face. Not Sherlock. D:**

**Okay, edits again: made Sherlock more in character here, in the scene with Molly and with Ebony after she wakes up.**

* * *

_Four weeks earlier_

_Kerplop._

Sherlock ground his teeth in annoyance and squeezed his eyes shut, reveling in the short-lived silence. After a minute the noise repeated itself.

_Kerplop._

Oh, for... not God's sake. He didn't believe in God. For... Darwin's sake? Hmm, it had a ring to it.

Fine. _For Darwin's sake! _

_Kerplop. _

Sherlock narrowly avoided throwing the most readily available object at the wall (which happened to be a fourteen-year-old girl, with short black hair and a bored expression). Instead he settled for interrupting his position of the last five hours by sitting up abruptly, gnashing his teeth together in the most primal expressions of irritation.

Ebony was stretched out on the sofa, messing around with a Rubik's cube (for that, of course, was who the girl was). She looked up at Sherlock as he suddenly sprang to his feet, growling with a sudden, intense irritation. Nothing new there. She watched him for a moment as he wrenched his gaze back and foth across the room, apparently trying to find something, in case he was about to do something interesting.

For the most part, Sherlock Holmes was rather a boring individual to the casual observer. However, if you knew him well (as Ebony was beginning to), you could put his actions down to a specific pattern, and thus could find some entertainment in watching him. He wasn't due to do anything interesting for - Ebony's eyes flitted to the clock on the wall - another hour or so of deep thinking, so unless her hypothesis was off...

It wasn't, not completely. Sherlock appeared to be listening for something specific, and when he didn't hear it, he gave a grunt and collapsed into the chair again, rubbing his forehead in irritation. Then he glanced at Ebony and saw her examining him.

"Yes?" He had noticed her, obviously. He noticed many things while he was thinking. He just hadn't given any indication of that noticing.

She shrugged her thin shoulders and turned back to the Rubik's cube, having solved it once without looking already. "Proving a theory."

He quirked his eyebrows at her evasive response, but, after a moment, dismissed it as typical teenage attention-seeking behaviour and turned to a more pressing topic. "Is there a particular reason why you are here?"

She shook her head, not moving her focus from the toy, turning it over and over and tracing it distractedly with her fingers.

He waited. After a minute she glanced at him without moving her head and saw he was still frowning at her, obviously expecting some sort of reply.

"It's getting rather boring, just sitting around doing nothing," she explained, tossing the cube behind her shoulder. It crashed onto the floor beneath the table where Sherlock kept most of his papers, but she took no notice and continued. "I can't read and eat and sleep and do other mundane activites in such copious amounts in order to fill my time, or else I'll go insane. It's much more interesting here. You're more interesting."

Sherlock stared at her. She hadn't expressed any sort of embarassment at that last part, so it wasn't a deliberate compliment she had been paying him; it was a fact. But no one had ever told him something of such a nature, much less a young child. John had given him compliments on his deducing, oh, that's for sure - but on him? For _Darwin's _sake, John lived with him. Had to put up with his 'rubbish', as John himself so prosaically put it. He didn't give one inch of a damn whether Sherlock was _interesting. _Though, come to think of it, Ebony lived with them as well.

"Interesting? How so?" He said, leaning forward with a sudden glint in his eye, the annoying noise the least of his concerns now. Figuring out why exactly his actions fascinated her was now at the forefront of his mind, pushing even the case he had been focused on away. He fixed her with that look of his, the one John affectionately called 'the pompous prick expression'. He was maybe a foot closer to her than before.

Ebony was surprised that he wanted to know, but then perhaps she shouldn't have been. Sherlock wanted to know everything, ass that he was.

"Er... well, I dunno," she said rather lamely, trying to get her observations in order. He rolled his eyes and glared at her.

"Try _not _to sound like a mindless country hick, will you? It really gets on anyone's nerves."

"Well, first," she said, ignoring him, "you have a pretty darn good life. Running around, getting evidence, bashing people's heads together if need be-"

"Which hardly ever comes around," he interrupted.

"-and, you know, just generally being exciting. Then there's the whole deducing thingy." She was deliberately talking like a typical, banal teenager, just to get on his nerves, and it didn't escape his notice.

"_Would you please talk like a civilized person?" _

"So your deductive reasoning. It could be classified as abductive in some cases, but under _modus ponens, _being the Law of Detachment, and _modus tollens, _being the Law of Contrapositive, your methods are largely deductive. Anyway, the computer-like way in which you apply these methods so quickly and mechanically - I've heard of it, but never seen it. It's interesting, seeing as you do it on a minutely basis and seemingly without thinking. I use these methods myself often, and it is tiring when others do not follow the same thought processes."

All through this speech, Ebony was talking faster and faster, a gleam making its way into her eyes. She was sitting up and staring to unconciously assume Sherlock's form - leaning forward, elbows on knees, fingers steepled. Sherlock had as much... _fun _observing her as he did ingesting her words.

"Also, I've noticed that you have a pattern to your seemingly erratic and bohemian lifestyle." Sherlock tilted his head, trying to identify exactly what she meant. "Your mood swings and manic-depressive 'condition', as most doctors would put it, follow a simple pattern, relying mostly on the condition of your brain - whether it is properly occupied, whether it is confined within your own physical limits, and your own sense of extreme boredom."

She took a deep breath, only to find Sherlock staring at her in fascination.

"What?" she said, a little self-concious.

"Most children of 14 years are not so well-versed in such arcane areas of science," he said smoothly. "And rarely are they so observant."

After an awkward beat, Ebony looked away. "Not 14 anymore," she muttered, as though embarassed of the fact. "Turned 15 yesterday."

Sherlock blinked. "Ah." So that was why Mrs. Hudson had been force-feeding her cake, with John laughing the whole time. It had been most irritating, and at the time he hadn't understood why they were doing it. He pushed the banal topic out of his mind and focused on what they had been speaking about earlier.

"Is there anything you wish to accomplish by being useless in this flat as opposed to yours?"

_Well, someone doesn't mince words, _Ebony thought to herself, but it was more of an amused observation. She had known about his bluntness the day she had stepped foot into 221B. "Not particularly."

"Oh, good. I need someone to accompany me on my latest 'misadventure', as I have heard Mrs. Hudson label them, to the mortuary. Care to join?" He was already standing up, stretching, striding purposefully to pick up his coat from across the room. Ebony liked watching Sherlock walk around - what with his natural grace and poise, he was quite the sight.

"I would like to, however... aren't I a minor? I'm not supposed to be in a morgue," she said flatly, trying not to bely her disappointment. Pathology was a rather morbid branch of science, but one she enjoyed thoroughly, with its close relation to more theoretical fields. She had always wanted to visit a morgue for herself.

Sherlock stopped as he bent down to retrieve his scarf (it had fallen to the floor from where he had thrown it carelessly onto an armchair) and straighened up slowly; it obviously had not occured to him that Ebony's young age would be a legal barrier. Then he grunted and scooped the scarf up, turning towards her with a smirk.

"Well, I'm sure I can get Molly to smuggle you in somehow, unless... Who's your legal guardian right now? Your father?"

Ebony paused, then shook her head. "I think it's Mrs. Hudson." Right, like she would ever get permission from _Mrs. Hudson _to visit a scientific laboratory filled with corpses. Just the thought of visiting a morgue made her blood boil with excitement.

"Ah, anyway, it won't matter. We'll only be there for a jot." He grinned at her, but more because he'd figured out the solution and less because she could come with him.

He strolled out the door and down the steps, with Ebony trailing after him. They squinted into the rare afternoon sun as they walked out the door and onto the street, a cab pulling up to the curb. How he managed to do that, Ebony would never find out.

"Right, so who's Molly?" she asked him, settling into the right corner of the cab. Sherlock was spread out languidly over the backseat, taking up as much of the space as he could (probably on purpose).

"Pathologist working at St. Bart's." He paused before continuing. "I should warn you, every conversation with Molly Hooper is tainted with a good dose of awkwardness, since the majority of people she meets are dead. She's not much for social interaction, given her morbid job and her tendency to ramble about the autopsies she performs, in great _detail, _I might add. I suppose she is pleasant when considering her through the narrow scope of social convention - however, all I am concerned with is the fact that she grants me access to the corpses without much hassle. Also, she gets me coffee."

Ebony was able to understand this complicated, fast-paced speech well enough, since she had lived with many people who spoke so eloquently with such ease. "And why, pray tell, does she grant you access?"

Sherlock shrugged. "As long as she continues to do so, I don't care _why."_

Ebony's brow furrowed. "So… you don't know?"

Sherlock bristled and shot her an annoyed look from across the cab, huffing indignantly. "I didn't say that!"

"You don't know, do you?"

"Well – you know, I –," Sherlock stopped when it became apparent to him that Ebony was more or less pulling his leg, though when he glanced at her, she was the picture of innocence. He turned away and glared daggers out the window as though the world had personally affronted him.

Luckily, Sherlock was saved from further mortification at the hands of a smirking teenager when the cab rolled to a stop near St. Bart's. It was a tall gray building, not remarkable in anything except for the fact that it was one of the top hospitals in London. Sherlock paid the cabbie and hopped out to see Ebony already making her way to the stairs.

The halls were surprisingly empty as they made their way to the mortuary part of the hospital, but perhaps the busier area was housed elsewhere? Ebony wasn't quite sure and she didn't quite care – she just wanted to see the morgue. Sherlock made his way through the maze of halls with a practiced air, as though he had made the journey thousands of times.

They strode into the morgue, the shape of Molly's name already formed on Sherlock's lips, only to find the lab empty.

Sherlock frowned and whipped around, scrutinizing the lab closely, as though Molly might be hiding amongst the apparatus.

"That's peculiar…" he muttered, half to himself. His head was actually reared back, he was so surprised. "It's Molly's shift. She should be –"

He stopped to look at Ebony, who had her head tilted, listening intently. He blinked and in the silence, he became acutely aware of a voice, a familiar one, just down the hallway, talking and laughing.

"Yes! No, they were _wonderful, _really, thank you so much. How did you know I liked lilies-of-the-valley so much?" Ebony could hear the soft voice (that for some reason reminded her of flowers) grow louder as the speaker grew closer to the door. "Oh, well… oh, you're right, we should! Yes, I'd like that. It was wonderful yesterday. The only thing is, there's this man who comes in - his name is Sherlock Holmes - and he's very demanding and he won't like it if I'm not there to grant him access - oh! Oh, no, he's not _troublesome, _just a little-"

The door opened and a woman walked in, dressed in a lab coat and shapeless trousers. She was small and pretty in a mousy, delicate sort of way, with thick brown hair tucked away into a sensible ponytail. Her eyes were crinkled at the corners with a shy smile as she cradled a phone to her ear and looked away at the wall – therefore, the tall, stony-faced figure and the smaller one next to him on the other side of the lab went unnoticed.

While she talked, Ebony's eyes raked over Molly Hooper. She had a cat, no boyfriend or girlfriend (though she was currently speaking with a new prospect), and a medical degree that she had obtained… two years early? Three? She looked about 28 or 29, not much younger than Sherlock - very young for a qualified pathologist. She was a workaholic, as well, to have obtained such a polished reputation already, and for _Sherlock_ to have praised her abilities.

Also, she made good coffee.

Just as Ebony grinned to herself, Molly finally turned around and noticed Sherlock staring at her, looking slightly peeved that he had gone unnoticed for so long and more than a little surprised at Molly's remarks about him over the phone. She squeaked incoherently and backed into the wall, swallowing nervously.

"Sorry," she stammered into the phone, a shade of her lovelier self from just a moment prior, "I-I have t-to go – call you back?" She snapped it shut and turned to Sherlock, her nervousness palpable in her wide eyes and self-conscious expression.

"Sh-Sherlock! Um, I d-didn't know… I mean, I was just, uh, well, anyway." She hadn't noticed Ebony yet, but Ebony was used to this – her presence was a rather forgettable one.

Molly took a deep breath to calm herself before continuing in a considerably more coherent tone.

"I don't have any bodies that were involved in any murders, lately, so, not to be rude, er, b-but, why are you here?" She squeaked this last bit nervously as her eyes flitted from her feet to Sherlock's expression, her attempt to be calm rather failing. Anxiety was prevalent in her every movement – she was alternating between biting her lip, twisting the hem of her lab coat, shuffling from one leg to another, and other such things.

It was almost painfully obvious that she had an unrequited crush on Sherlock.

Sherlock answered her in a slightly dismissive tone, and a bit scoffing, as though she should know just by his mere presence in the lab. "I needed a body for my experiment."

Molly's shoulders sagged slightly. "A whole body…?" She mashed her lips together and ducked her head before continuing. "But Sherlock, I - I have a lunch date, I don't have time -"

Sherlock rolled his eyes slightly, shaking his head at her in a condescending manner.

"Lunch date? Please, Molly, spare yourself. You know it won't work, you're trying to engage in a frivolous social convention that will never amount to anything anyway and will most probably culminate in your taking off work for two daysto throw yourself a pity party with attendees totalling one including your cat. I think it's better for everyone that you simply stay as you are."_  
_

He uttered this whole sadistic speech at top speed, saying the words calmly as though the veracity of his words could not be disproved. At the end he simply stopped and stared at her, obviously waiting for her to start nodding and apologizing and acquiescing easily to his demands as always.

Molly swallowed and inspected her feet furtively. Ebony could see she was hurt, but not as hurt as some people would be, considering that Sherlock had effectively just told her that she would be forever alone romantically. The lady was obviously used to abuse from this man, even if he didn't intend it - and Ebony felt a sharp twinge of anger towards him. Clueless git. She decided it was probably a good time to make her presence known before anything awkward occurred.

She stepped forward from behind Sherlock. Molly's head snapped up at the sound of her footsteps, and her eyes widened when she saw the girl in front of her, seemingly having appeared from mid-air.

"Hi, you must be Molly Hooper, yeah? I'm Ebony, Sherlock's neighbor," she said in the friendliest tone she could muster. Molly looked at her in surprise for only a minute before breaking into a smile and holding out her hand for Ebony to shake.

"Ebony? That's a really cool name. You're Mrs. Hudson's niece, yes?" Surprisingly, Molly didn't sound unduly awkward. It was probably only in effect when speaking to Sherlock, then.

"That's right. Sorry, um, about him -," she motioned lamely to Sherlock over her shoulder, who grunted indignantly and made as if to say something, "he's _really _bored. I guess you must know what he's like then."

Molly smiled, but her brown eyes were still a little hurt as they flicked over to Sherlock for a moment and then back to Ebony. "Yeah, I do. So, when did you move into Baker Street? Mrs. Hudson mentioned you a few times when I talked to her last, but I haven't had a chance to come over -,"

"Wrong!" Sherlock announced from where he stood, exhaling as his eyes narrowed at her. "You've been hiding out at your flat, trying to convince yourself that you need to go out and date someone to get over your latest relationship."

Ebony huffed impatiently. She threw him a glare and a "Can't you ever let people talk in peace, you nitwit?" over her shoulder, then turned back to Molly. "I moved into the basement flat two or three weeks ago. It's been wonderful, except for _him," _referring, obviously, to Sherlock.

"Oh, that's nice," Molly said, a little taken aback by their open animosity for each other.

"Done exchanging the insipid pleasantries required by society?" Sherlock interjected, tones verily dripping in sarcasm. "I'd like my body, Molly. If it's not too much to ask."

Molly ignored the sarcasm and smiled at Ebony as she walked towards the coolers on the other side of the room. "Well, nice meeting you." Then she stopped and looked at her closely. "Hold on, you're a minor, aren't you? I'm sorry, but unless you've got parental permission, I can't let you see the corpses..."

Ebony whirled around and gave Sherlock a glare. "I _told _you. I _told _you I wouldn't be allowed, didn't I?"

Sherlock scowled, irritated at being proved wrong. "Well, you should've suspected it. Run along now, or do you need a chaperone to help you get back home? I can draw you a map, if you can't operate the maps application on your phone. I'll make it simple, promise." He held up his hands, finger spread to show they weren't crossed. He had an almost comically mournful expression on his face.

Ebony almost stuck her tongue out at him but settled for a shake of the head. With a wave to Molly, she set off to Baker Street once more.

* * *

_Footsteps in the hallway. Again._

_By now, she knows it is a dream… but she is filled with a drowning, irrational terror nonetheless. She is sitting stock-still on her bed. In the same position as always. But this time she knows. She knows she needs to move right now, or else she won't be in time to avoid him._

_But she is frozen._

_With fear._

_In the back of her mind she knows that it will end before he hits. She only feels the horror, the uninhibited fear, but none of the physical abuse that promises to accompany it._

_The door creaks open. She relaxes visibly. It will end in a moment. He will come in and he will yell and just as he raises his quavering hand it will end. In a moment._

_He stands in the doorway. He sways in his usual drunken gaze. Every time he holds something different in his sweaty fingers with which to inflict pain; this time he holds a broken beer bottle, its edges sharp and ominous._

_She waits for the end. She waits for fear to unclench its sickening hold on her. She waits for it all to slowly fade – for everything to glow a gentle white, to slowly wither away while her mind silences its own gruesome fantasies. She waits for the end._

_He surges toward her and raises the bottle with a snarl. She doesn't flinch away; the end should be coming. Any moment now._

_There is a flash of green glass as he backhands her with the bottle's jagged edge. White flashes erupt into her vision, eat away at her consciousness, as her head snaps away in shock. Then the pain comes. It tears at the very fiber of her being. She must be dying. She _must _be._

_The end doesn't come._

_Her skin is on fire. There are volcanoes and pools of lava and devils from the deepest pits of hell piercing the skin and it is agonizing and she becomes acutely aware of a scream, a hollowed scream that is full of agony in its purest state, and she realizes it is emanating from her own throat. She is not shocked; the pain blocks out all other emotion._

_The end doesn't come._

_The bottle slaps her again. And again. Her hold on consciousness, as fragile as it is, begins to slip. She can feel herself letting go. She fights the blackness. She screams louder, as if it might help._

_The end doesn't come._

_He begins to scream as well, but his screams say something. At first she can't make out what he's saying and doesn't care to try. Then his voice rises. His voice booms until she can no longer hear the sound of her own shrill agony. She has no trouble hearing him now._

_He is screaming her name. _

_But it is not his voice. His voice is raspy and grating and harsh, like he is. This voice is a melody, a song, a smooth baritone that is slightly familiar. Her name is music in this voice. _

_The bottle pierced her skin when he hit her. It didn't bleed right away. Now the blood is pouring down her face in torrents, cascading to the floor like a barrage of tears. It paves a riverbed on her cheeks. It hangs on to her chin, unwilling to let go, before gravity wrenches it down. There is a pool of it. There is a big pool. Her head starts to swim._

_The voice gets louder. It invades her mind. She can no longer think. She can no longer hold on._

_It ends._

* * *

The dream ended. The voice did not.

Ebony was sprawled out over the desk, her body bent over from the chair she was slumped in. Her body was trembling involuntarily throughout the dream, overcome with horror. The river of blood she had felt tearing down her face was really a river of tears, hot tears of shock that had erupted from her eyes during the nightmare. Her fists were clenching and relaxing at random intervals as shudders of pain racked her body.

She sat up bolt-right in the chair, wheezing as she attempted to suck all the oxygen out of the room, eyes wide. As she heaved, she heard something. It was the smooth voice she had heard coming from _his _mouth.

"Ebony!" The voice wasn't leaving. Why wasn't the voice leaving? She slammed her head against the desk in a half-dazed attempt to get it to leave. It didn't work.

"Ebony!" The voice was relentless. She resorted to gripping her head and curling into a fetal position, trying feebly to block out the voice. Part of her knew that the motion was completely irrational, but she did it anyway. It was something. _Something to make it go away._

"Ebony!" This time the voice was a little more forceful. She was just about to start screaming again to drown out the voice when she felt a pair of hands, fingers long and smooth, grab her own and wrench them away from her head. The hands roughly shook her until she was fully awake and sitting upright. She could see who it was now.

It was Sherlock. He was the voice.

That's why it had seemed so familiar, but so _not. _Sherlock didn't yell. Sherlock got exasperated sometimes, but he had never raised his voice, even when Anderson was around. He had sounded so foreign. Unlike himself, even with the slightest increase in volume.

He was bent over her, eyes narrowed as he examined her, panting slightly, though from what she wasn't sure. He seemed to have run all the way here.

He still hadn't let go of her. His hands were tightly holding on to her arms, as if she were a lifeline. His face was maybe six inches away from hers, examining her with a startling intensity.

His voice was rough and low as he spoke. "Was that a nightmare?"

Ebony could only stare at him, petrified, until his eyes narrowed even further and he spoke again, a little sharply.

"Answer me! Why were you screaming and thrashing around in your sleep?"

Ebony squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head wildly. The most she managed to say was a squeaky, "I – I can't…"

Sherlock blinked and released her, seemingly only just realizing what he was doing. He straightened up and swallowed, then reared back and turned abruptly from her. He rubbed his clenched jaw and faced the wall.

Ebony sighed and cradled her head in her heads, leaning her elbows on to her knees. She tried to compose herself. It didn't work. They stayed like that for a moment.

Then Sherlock spoke from where he was, still not turning to face her.

"Well?" He sounded eerily calm as he fingered his suit jacket, waiting for her answer.

Ebony took a shaky breath and decided to try the path of denial. "Well what?"

He snorted a bit. "Don't let's go and ignore this, for Darwin's sake, just tell me. It'll be faster."

His dismissive but iron-hard tone stirred a bit of anger in her, and she remained quiet, the silence sullen.

Sherlock turned back to her, seeing her reluctance, and tried a different tactic to get hear to speak: concern.

"Ebony," he said slowly, "what was the nightmare about?"

She mashed her lips together and looked away, glaring a hole into the floor.

"Ebony," he repeated softly, crouching down in front of her, "you have to tell me. Else I can't help you."

She tucked her knees up to her chest and switched her glare to him. He abandoned the concerned look and glared back, just as obstinate. They glared at each other for a few tense moments, until Ebony gave a huff and looked away. He noted the reaction with a twinge of interest.

"Well," she said, so softly Sherlock had to strain to catch her, "you might as well know."

* * *

**Sorry... this was more of a filler than anything. A very _long_ filler, but a filler nonetheless. But, we get to see a heart-to-heart between characters in the next flashback chapter! YEAH!**

**BIG HUNK OF FUN, RIGHT GUYS? **

***cricket cricket* ... Right guys? Hello? Sigh...**

**Anyway, we do get to see more of Ebony's history in the next chapter. And then the seventh(!) chapter will return to the 'present day' narration.**

**Hope you're looking forward to this~**


	7. Chapter 6 - Terror and the Dream

**AN: So hey! I just wanted to update. I'm sorry, I'm tired.**

**Just to make sure: chapters five and six are flashback. Just a heads up.**

**And a reminder, this takes place after the Great Game. My figuring is that they meet Adler about six months after the pool scene, so this is mostly time-kill, you know?**

**Oh, I'm joking. I love this. This junk is fun.**

**I'm so sorry for abandoning this for like a month but I have been super busy. Like kickass busy. And lazy. But mostly busy.**

_It was two o'clock. The streets of London were empty, save for a few stragglers, mostly drunkards and cabbies circling 'round them, hoping for some extra business. The buildings were dark, and the pathways quiet. The bustling city was dark, its inhabitants asleep._

_Mostly._

_Sherlock, of course, was heedless of time. For the last two days, he had been slogging away at an experiment that was sure to help his case studies along beautifully. He had finally convinced John to get a second fridge for his body parts and was using it to its fullest potential (and then some, really). Already he had managed to filch a head, a stomach and a few stray fingers from Molly - but it wasn't as if he had gotten them for free. He had had to pay her some compliments, carefully laying it all out to ensure that it seemed entirely sincere to her._

_He had finally gotten his concoction of various gastroenteric fluids, a bit of evaporated milk, some heavily diluted hydrochloric acid and Mrs. Hudson's strongest eggnog (which was strong - the hydrochloric acid undiluted was weak compared to it) all right. It was perfect. Now he just had to..._

_For Darwin's sake. _

_Screaming._

_Sherlock sat up bolt-right in his chair, straining once more to hear it. It was a familiar voice, one that had belitted and ridiculed and abused him, and yet earned a place in his memory over the last few weeks. Ebony._

_Ebony. Screaming. Bloody murder. In the middle of the night. It could only mean one thing._

_Sherlock only took a half-second before he tore out of the room and flew down the stairs. He silently screamed at gravity to pull him down faster, get him to the girl faster than it had ever taken anything before. His mind was racing._

_It couldn't be. He couldn't be it. It couldn't be. He couldn't be bored already. The game was only just finished. He couldn't be it._

_It couldn't be Moriarty._

_If it was Moriarty, and something happened to him or John or Ebony or Mrs. Hudson, then Sherlock would never forgive himself._

Never.

Never.

Never.

_That was his only thought as he tore into Ebony's flat._

* * *

The thing about darkness is that it makes you braver somehow. With the absence of light comes the absence of self-consciousness, the product of deducing eyes and searching stares in the light. In the dark you are hidden from all this. Your words escape your mouth with reckless abandon, a regular torrent with the will and power of a thousand oceans. And you feel as if those words could be floating around in mid-air - unheard and untouched. Words no one will ever catch, whose existence won't ever be known. And you can pretend that no one's there.

In the dark, in your mind, you are alone.

So perhaps this is why Ebony felt a surge of bravery, there with the veil of night drawn close. Perhaps this is why she let the torrent pour from her mouth. Perhaps that is why she handed out her untouched words, allowing them to be caught, allowing them to be known.

* * *

"When I was much younger, about five years old, my father used to travel quite a bit, for his work, mostly. He felt it would be a good learning experience, I suppose, so he took me along with him. He wasn't a bad person, my father. He was kind and never raised his voice, but he was distant, and... he was devoted to my mother. When she died, the part of him that enabled him to feel that kind of connection to another human being died as well. I'm sure that if my mother were still alive, he would've been a good father. Mother balanced him out well - she was impulsive, but sincere, and he was solid, if a little removed. Together, they would've made a good team, but without my mother, he sort of just wasted away."

"Machine-like, was he?" Sherlock asked, a little disinterested. He wanted to tell her to hurry along, but there was obviously some kind of point to her story. He was an impatient man, but it had been a long time since he had not been able to figure out _why _something had happened. It was a peculiar feeling, not being able to figure it all out just by looking at her.

"No, not completely." Ebony had curled up into a ball, her chin resting on her knees, eyes closed. Now she opened them and cocked her head, considering. She appeared to be trying to articulate everything correctly for him. "I know he loved me, somehow. At least I think he did. Not like he did my mother, anyway. He never told me or showed it. He left me alone most of the time. He treated me more like a far-off niece than a daughter. Kind, but removed." She paused and added, almost apologetic, "I'm sorry, Sherlock, I've never explained this to anyone."

He waved it away, his eyes almost burning a hole through her in his impatience. "Continue."

She drummed her fingers on the desk, gathering her thoughts. "When I was about ten, we moved to Ireland, into a lonely castle atop a hill in the middle of a forest. Usually I loved such places, places that I could wander by myself and explore, and not have to interact with any other children amy age. But I hated this place. Father had gotten it into his head that I needed a real teacher, since I was in the ninth year in the eyes of the law. Before then I had had informal tutors, mostly to guide me, since I liked to teach myself. He thought that I was at a turning point in my education and if I didn't concentrate then, I never would. Left to myself I would've wandered the halls of the castle, studying it all day.

"The tutor he chose for me was young, 25 or so. He was fresh out of college with a teaching degree, and he needed a job very badly to support his ailing parents. Or so he said to me. My father didn't really care - he just wanted a good tutor that would keep me out of trouble. The man's name was James Middleton, but he asked me to call him Jim. I never could. It seemed too familiar, and I didn't want that, with a man like him. He was a very nice person, of course. Charming, kind, generous.

"But he was intelligent, and that was the problem. He was _too _intelligent. Almost scarily so. Something seemed off about him... Sherlock? You all right?"

Sherlock's head had snapped around to glare at her the moment she had mentioned James Middleton. His gaze grew more intense until she looked up and saw him - jaws clenched, arms tensed until they shook.

"How did he seem off to you?" When he spoke, the words squeezed out of gritted teeth.

Ebony stared at him in surprise, but complied. "He was too intelligent, like I said. He knew everything about everyone. He was a lot like you, in that sense. He could deduce, but he did it with almost a malice... he was less of a man, more of a snake. If that makes sense." She looked at him sharply. "Why? Does he sound familiar?"

Sherlock was very still for a moment. She could see the clogs in his head whirring into overtime (even more so than usual, anyway) and she knew there was something that he wasn't telling her, but he shook himself and turned away once more.

"No matter. Continue."

She sighed to herself, but she kept talking. If Sherlock saw it fit to tell her, then he would.

Wouldn't he?

"For about six months, everything was fine. Since I didn't have any hobbies or friends to occupy my time, all I did was slog away at my work. I finished ninth grade and was a month into tenth by the time I turned eleven. James Middleton was helpful, I guess, but all he really knew well was logic and reasoning. He was wonderful at psychology, I remember, really anything that had to do with humans in general. That's mostly what we did.

"And he taught me the laws of deduction and how to apply them. I was a fairly observant child already, and lonely, so it didn't take very long for me to catch on. I thought he wasn't doing it for fun, so I didn't think much of it. My father, the few times he checked in, thought it beneficial for my psychology course, and saw that it was really the only thing that I applied myself to enthusiastically, so he accepted it."

Sherlock finally lost his patience and hissed, "If you're going to continue with your narrative, would you stop with all the sentimental drivel and get to the point?"

Ebony simply scoffed at him and crossed her arms. "I was just getting to it, you dolt."

Sherlock huffed in response and glared down at her. "Didn't sound like it." He whirled away. She shook her head at his back.

"Every Thursday, Middleton had his friends over for a jot of time. It was a term of his contract. They were in his wing of the castle, I was on my bed reading, the servants were all asleep in their quarters, and my father was out. One particular Thursday, they had a bit drunk, I think, because Middleton had gotten confident that my father wouldn't up and sack him for no reason. He felt a bit more brash.

"I was reading, as I said, and suddenly I heard a thumping on the stairs. It was irregular and the breathing was erratic. A drunk man. I could tell it was Middleton because of his shoes - they had a very particular sound. He was very poor, but he always wore custom-made shoes, even if his other clothes were falling to bits. It was strange because they must have cost a year's salary or something equivalent.

"But anyway, I was rather scared. My father didn't drink and I didn't really know anyone else besides him and my tutors and servants and such. I didn't really know what a drunk man would do. I didn't know what to expect. I think that was what scared me, not knowing."

Ebony's voice was utterly flat and emotionless as she spoke - _not allowing sentiment to taint what needs to be said, _Sherlock thought approvingly. _She would make a good scientist. _Nothing betrayed her discomfort - no shifting eyes or twisting hands. She wore a good mask.

"My bedroom door opened, and Middleton stood there, heavily drunk. For a moment, he just stood there, swaying, and holding his beer bottle. It was a Beamish Stout bottle, I remember. I don't know why that stands out. It's an irrelevant detail.

"And then he went ballistic."

She paused here and took a sharp breath, then went on.

"He started to destroy everything, smashing his beer bottle, punching everything, cursing loudly. He was in a rage. Luckily most of my things were in the library, where I spent most of my time. He only destroyed shelving and such. And then he started to hit me.

"But you know, I finally figured out why he felt so wrong to me. Why he looked so peculiar. Because when he hit me, he had this crazy psychopathic smile on his face. It suit him down to his boots. He looked at home with his psycho expression."

Sherlock closed his eyes. His irrational panic from before had left him, but a small shred of anger still flashed through him. He had gotten fond of the girl, annoying as she was, over the last few weeks. Like Lestrade, she had earned his grudging respect.

Of course, he still didn't count her as a friend. That distinction belonged to one man, and one man only.

"Did he..." Sherlock's throat clenched at the question. _Don't let sentiment get in the way now, you fool. _"Er, do anything more?"

She looked at him with a blank look until it clicked. "Ah. No. He didn't molest me, if that's what you're asking."

Her blunt way of saying it seemed to be a gentle nudge for him, to get him out of an uncomfortable position. He thanked her silently.

He wasn't sure why he was embarassed to ask. Usually sexual violence didn't daunt him. After all, it was just another impulse for violence, another motive, with a little hormonal emotion mixed in, of course.

Perhaps it was because he actually knew the person this time. The _'victim'._

Thinking of Ebony as a victim nearly made him laugh aloud.

But she was speaking again, so he settled for a chuckle to himself and turned his attentions to her once more.

"Every Thursday, the same thing would happen. He would stumble in, hit me a few times, and stumble out. It was hell, pure hell, but I was sure my father would not believe me if I told him. Middleton was a very good tutor, but more importantly, he had perfected the art of the lie.

"He didn't act any different towards me. He didn't even make any unusual remarks. I think he was either so drunk he couldn't remember, or he remembered and simply didn't mention it. I thought perhaps he had some ulterior motive."

Sherlock stared at a spot on the wall, concentrating hard. He was getting that _feeling _again - that feeling that everything was connected, and he could get the connection, but it was only just out of his reach. Just a little farther.

Then it hit him. _Perfected the art of the lie. Psychopathic. _The signs pointed to one person - he just needed confirmation of the theory...

"My father caught him one day, after about two months of it. He walked into my bedroom, about to ask if I wanted to move back to England, as he told me later. Middleton had his hand raised. Father simply looked at him and told him to get out.

"Middleton looked up. He was so incredibly drunk that it took a moment for everything to get past his haze. When it got to him, he just sort of snickered and pranced out. He said something to my father as he passed out, but I couldn't quite catch it. Father didn't react.

"He looked at me. I was curled up in a ball on my bed, just sort of blankly staring at the wall and rocking back and forth."

"'How long has this been going on?' he went. I told him. 'Why didn't you tell me?' He seemed puzzled, not angry."

'There was no evidence. You wouldn't believe me.' I said this all in a monotone, very matter-of-fact. I still hadn't moved.

'Are you all right?' That surprised me. I didn't think he would ask such a thing.

'Fine. But I don't want another tutor, if that's all right.'

He smiled. 'On the contrary. I'd prefer you not to have one.' And then he left, presumably to take care of Middleton. He sent a servant to clean everything up and attend to my cuts and things."

Ebony let out a breath and shifted in her seat. She risked a glance at Sherlock. He was still facing the wall, but even in the darkness she could make out the profile of his face, the slope of his neck, the angle of his shoulder blades.

The fury evident in his rigid stature.

After a moment of silence, he exhaled sharply, adjusted his rumpled jacket and turned to face her. His mask was back in place.

"This tutor of yours. Describe him, physically this time."

Ebony still couldn't figure out why Sherlock was so insistent upon the tutor, but she shrugged and complied.

"Medium height, medium build. Irish. Black hair, slicked back most of the time. Dark eyes. Solid-looking, I guess, but a sort of soft face. If one didn't look deep enough, he looked trustworthy. But I couldn't, not fully."

His eyes flickered to her for a slight moment, then back to the wall. She pretended not to notice. "Why not?" His voice could've been a robot for all the emotion present in it.

"When he thought no one was looking, when he was sure he was all alone, sometimes his eyes would get a peculiar glow and he would grin. Just these mad, insane grins to himself. They disappeared after half a second, but I never doubted they weren't there. The first time he did that I knew he was completely psycho." She swallowed a shiver, then continued, her distaste evident. "They were encouragements for himself, I think. Reminders to himself to keep himself going on. At what, though, I never managed to find out."

Her voice was still quite passive. Too passive. Sherlock finally realized that it was her coping method - she was shoving her emotions to the side, completely ignoring them, shunting them, in order to keep her mind. She was allowing them to build up and fester, like a boil, but that didn't matter. As long as she didn't have to live with them. As long as they were gone.

Before he could stop himself, he thought, _rather like me. _He shook his head frantically - of course it wasn't like him. _Emotions - _he tried to make himself sneer, _sentiment. _He had long since mastered the art of emotionless life. He had long since buried them within his soul_. __  
_

_If you have one, _his brain jibed at him. An unsolicited thought again - he really had to get himself under control. He had let himself get out of hand. John had asserted many times that emotion was an advantage, a bonus that Moriarty didn't have, but Sherlock couldn't see that. Of course it wasn't. Was it? He stood there, facing a wall with horrible paint, struggling to make himself believe his own brain.

But then again, Sherlock Holmes could only try. That didn't necessarily mean he succeeded every time.

He shook his head and banished the thought to a corner of his brain, like one would close a window on a computer browser. He squeezed his eyes shut and threw himself onto the sofa, head leaning forward until his chin knocked against his chest. Ebony recognized the expression.

"What happened?" She asked, sitting up suddenly. "Why is Middleton so important?"

She didn't receive an answer. The man in front of her was sprawled across the armchair with a lazy manner, though he was being anything but - his chest was the only thing that moved, its rising and sinking the one signal to her of his even being alive.

Ebony rolled her eyes and sat back in the chair, settled to wait.

Then the force of all that had just happened hit her. She had effectively told Sherlock her biggest secret, hadn't she? He knew. He knew what made she was made of, he knew what the very essence of her being held, he knew what made her _her. _He knew.

And _she - _she had defied her self-enacted laws, had destroyed the walls _she herself _had constructed to ensure that something like Middleton never happened to her again. Ebony absently rubbed the birthmark on her arm, a dark splotch on a sea of pale skin that she always kept covered up. Well, usually, at any rate.

_Another secret, _she thought morosely, _revealed to him. _Couldn't afford to reveal much more, she couldn't. Sherlock would know too much, he couldn't be trusted, he...

And with a shock, Ebony realized that she trusted Sherlock Holmes, one of the most inhumane, emotionless, unlikable, unworthy men she could ever hope to trust. She trusted him with her life. As she had done on several occasions.

It held true for everyone she had met in the last couple of weeks - Mrs. Hudson, John, even Molly and Lestrade to a considerably lesser extent. Until then, Ebony hadn't trusted anyone, not even herself. Not fully, _not with her life._

It was true, what Mrs. Brixton had said. _Going there, to Baker Street, it__ will change you, Ash. For the better. You will learn just how deep human bonds can go, mark my words. You will be a changed Ebony. _

She was thinking about this, marveling, really, when Sherlock suddenly sat up and spoke. His eyes flew open and started to dance.

It was a name she had heard only once before in her life, but had never forgotten. And now she never had a prayer of forgetting.

"_Moriarty." _

Ebony looked up at him. "Moriarty...?" She said it as if she was tasting the name, rolling it around her mouth before tossing it out.

Sherlock's unseeing gaze washed over her slight form, curled up in the chair. "You've heard the name." It was a statement, not a question.

"My father said it once over the phone. He worked for the government, though what he did I never knew, and he held many private conversations. Ever since I was a child it had been drilled into me that Father couldn't be disturbed while on the phone, Father couldn't be annoyed, Father couldn't be bothered. That rule during my childhood was very simple, but set in stone: Don't disturb Father, or there will be consequences.

"But they never said anything about eavesdropping.

"One day I was passing by Father's door, and it was slightly ajar. He usually kept it locked while talking on the phone. I looked in, not expecting anything, but instead I saw him scrunched down into his chair, hunched over the telephone, wearing an expression he never wore. He looked afraid.

"And of course I tried to eavesdrop. But all I could catch was one word, a word that sounded very foreign to my ears. _Moriarty." _She whispered the last bit, sounding a bit reverent. "What is it?"

"A name." Sherlock's reply was vague, but Ebony got the impression it was intentionally so, and not because he was trying to be mysterious.

"_Who_ is it, then?"

There was another silence. It was heavy, like a blanket, and it felt wrong to throw off its comfortable weight. But Ebony waited for him to do so.

If there was one thing she knew about herself, it was that she was a patient individual, almost to the point of insanity.

"He is..." For a moment, his jaw moved up and down noiselessly as he tried to articulate. Ebony could sense the cogs whirring in his head, pumping furiously, the gears of his mind's train about to overheat. "... He is a monster."

"Okay," she said slowly, her fingers dancing across the tabe's surface. "That doesn't tell me much," she added when it became apparent that he was saying nothing more.

He stared at her with an unseeing gaze, looking through her to an unknown distance, until he suddenly moved in one fluid motion across the room, to the window. The motion startled her, but she swallowed her surprise. He faced away from her, considering the landscape of a sleepy London before him. _He isn't comfortable. Whenever he moves to the window, he isn't comfortable. _Her mind paused a minute. _Why is he uncomfortable?_

He was now partly illuminated, a shard of pale moonlight slicing through the haphazardly shut curtains to brighten his profile. She could see his jaw clench and unclench, his mind swaying back and forth between decisions.

He then turned to her again so that she could not see any part of his face but his eyes - green-blue-gray-and-any-color-imaginable eyes that glowed slightly. A cat. He was a cat, soft and feline in his motions and personality. Ebony amused herself for a moment with thoughts of Sherlock sitting on the ground with cat ears, licking his paws and meowing irritably about boring cases, and John next to him, pawing at the ground with paws that were as sandy as Sherlock's were black, looking exasperated. Then she told her brain to shut up.

"It wasn't supposed to," he said, his voice completely void of any emotion she might've heard a minute ago. "I think... I think that is enough for tonight, Ebony. Good evening." He crossed the room stiffly and disappeared from the doorway.

She exhaled through her nose and hung her head, listening to him creak up the stairs, slower than he ever had before. She waited until the sounds of his footsteps retreated before getting up and dragging herself to her bed.

Perhaps it was time to face Moriarty. Perhaps she could take him on.


	8. Chapter 7 - Love and the Letters

**AAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK. So sorry for not uploading! I got discouraged from lack of reviews or feedback, which I LIVE on, and then shit happened and I couldn't get a chance to write or upload. Really sorry.**

**Anyway, all that's done and now I'm back, kiddies! I know you don't want to hear me rant so here goes the important information before I start:**

**This picks up where chapter four left off. Just putting it out there.**

**Also, I know that the songs mentioned in this chapter came out later than 1997, when Ebony is supposedly about a year old. Going by the show timeline, she was born in 1996, but I don't care. Let's just say that everything that happens in the past happens in 2002, okay? I have the creative license, after all. **

**All right, that's done. Let's get on with this.**

**Edit: So my new beta brought it to my attention that... I need to fix the ending. Cliffhanger gone. Whoops. See, this is why I should plan out the plot, isn't it? Sorry about that.**

**But it'll come up later, I promise!**

* * *

_Chapter four recap:_

_The door flew open for the second time in five minutes. If it had been any other man, he would've been absolutely knackered at the response time for the knock, but this was no normal chaffeur._

_This was Freddy Wilkinson, and he was an Ebony chaffeur._

_The tall, lanky young man looked up, eyes uncertain, until he saw a young girl with an equally unsure gaze. For a moment, they only stared, until Freddy broke out into a grin._

_"Ash! It's you!"_

_He swept her up in a hug, which she returned (to some extent - she wasn't much for physical affection) after a shocked second, swinging her around a good three or four times right there in the doorway. After putting her down, he laughed as he looked her up and down._

_"Goodness, yer lookin' happier than all the times I've ever seen ye. London seems ter be suitin' ye well."_

_"It's not bad. But Freddy - why are you here?"_

_"Left with nary a goodbye, didn't ye?" Freddy said to her in an accusatory tone, though his eyes were affectionate. "Had to say a proper farewell, didn't I? We all miss ye, Ash, we really do. It ain't the same without ye." He was forlorn for a long moment, until he looked down and remembered the package he had brought. "Oh, a'course! And then there's this. Mrs. Brixton found this while she was cleanin' out the attic, she did. Papers, they are. But that's all I know fer sure. She sends you her love."_

_He handed her the package carefully. Ebony stared down at it - even if they were only papers, they had to weigh a good three to four kilos. She wondered briefly why the Ebony housekeeper thought it fit to send Freddy all the way to London just to deliver some papers, but she pushed it out of her mind. Mrs. Brixton had a good reason for everything. Ebony would figure it out in due time._

_"Heavy, innit?" Freddy said, breaking into her thoughts. "Wonder what's in there... paper bricks? Anyway, I have ter be off, Ash. I only managed ter slip away on my break and get this to ye. If I mailed it, yer dad would find some way ter be interferin' with the mail, yeah? Be seein' ye soon, then." He hesitated, then bent and gave her a kiss on the cheek, just like the older brother she had always considered him to be._

_"Take care of yourself, Freddy."_

_"Always, Ash."_

_With a tip of his hat and a jaunty grin, Freddy turned and slipped into the limousine. She watched it vanish amongst the traffic, before slowly shutting the door and plodding up the steps._

_Sherlock and John were still at the window, having seen all that had conspired. John looked completely nonplussed, his eyes wide as he turned to look at her, while Sherlock looked like his usual apathetic self. He fixed his gaze on her as she entered the room._

_"Eb? Who was that?" John blabbered, trying to keep a level head (and subsequently failing). "What just happened? Are you sure that wasn't some stalker and there might be a bomb in that, be careful-"_

_"It's not a bomb, John, don't be absurd," Sherlock cut in, sounding irritated. "It was obviously a young man she knew." He didn't try to mask his intense stare. Ebony tried not to flinch - the sharp tone of his voice hurt like a sword, almost physically. "Wasn't it?"_

_Ebony avoided the question and instead answered one neither of them had asked. "I don't know what's in the package. Freddy only said they were papers." She looked down at it. "Shall we open it and see?"_

_John looked at the package for a moment as well, calmed down enough to say, "Well, if you're positive it's not a bomb, then why not?"_

_Sherlock said nothing._

_They all stared at the package until Ebony took ahold of the string that tied it and tugged on it gently. The envelope opened, and a thick sheaf of papers, about fifty of them or so, sat in her hands. A pink memo sat on top._

_She stared down at it._

_John suddenly sensed her discomfort at being in the limelight. He turned to Sherlock and said, in a falsely cheery voice that fooled no one, "Hey, Sherlock, how about a cup of tea?"_

_Sherlock saw right through the attempt at once, but he was thirsty, and Ebony seemed very uncomfortable at opening the package. He nodded to John and allowed himself to be lead away, shooting her a look as he passed her into the kitchen._

_Good old John, Ebony thought fondly, focusing on the package again, now alone. He always knows what to do._

_"You want some tea, Eb?" John called._

_"I'm good, thanks," she responded absently, fingering the pink memo. Cheap, flimsy paper, covered with a hurried scrawl. Mrs. Brixton's handwriting._

_"Hey, I'm going back down," she called suddenly, turning to the door. "I'll see you later, John, Sherlock." Her voice was vague as she stepped out of the flat._

_"What? Ebony, are you alri-" John stepped back into the living room, only to find himself talking to an empty room. He huffed to himself and walked back to the stove, mumbling to himself about how he never knew what went on._

_Sherlock sat at the kitchen table in a stony silence, listening to the sound of Ebony's footfalls on the staircase._

* * *

The sound of the door slamming echoed loudly as Ebony walked inside the flat. She didn't think of it as _her_ flat, not anymore, as she barely lived there. Much of her time was spent upstairs, with Sherlock and John. She even slept there most of the time, to keep Sherlock company when he was awake at two o'clock trying to solve a case and needed some sentient life form to keep from going insane.

She sat down slowly in her desk chair, setting the papers down on the desk. She stared at them. The papers simply sat there, taunting her. Mocking her. Of course, she would have been a little frightened if they had done anything else.

She had read the letter from Mrs. Brixton on the way down. It had shattered her.

_My dear Ash, _(it had read),

_I am at a loss for words. So much has happened since you left. These estates have always seemed hollowed and cold to me ever since your mother died, but you were always there to cheer us all up. _

_And now, even you aren't here._

_You didn't know it, but you did have an effect on your father. Not much, mind you. No point in pretending anymore – you're almost a woman – but your father is a stoic man, a man of logic, not love. But you softened him just a little. All daughters do that to their fathers, you know. Even a father like yours…_

_But now, he is a statue. _

_I found these papers cleaning up the attic. Freddy must have told you that, but I didn't tell him anything else for his own good. If your father catches ahold of these, Ashland, both of us shall be out of a job, and I'm sure Dr. Ebony will ensure that we won't be getting new ones soon. _

_These are letters from your mother that she wrote to you. _

_While she was dying._

_There must be about sixty of them, but I don't know. I am sending them to you because every girl must know their mother, and, oh, especially you, my dear. Your mother was something wonderful. She was an angel, I'm sure. Your auntie Mrs. Hudson must've given you the same impression. Ask her anything – I'm sure she shall tell you all you'd like to know about Elspeth. Your mother had no greater confidante._

_And to you, Ebony, I say thank you. I don't think our paths will cross ever again, but I am glad that they did, for however brief a time. I love you like the daughter I always wished I had had._

_Truly,_

_Eliza Brixton_

Ebony read the letter over a second time, noting the hurriedness of the writing and places where Mrs. Brixton had paused, perhaps to check if she was being watched. The Ebony mansion was not the best place for privacy, whether it was of the family or their servants.

Her fingers were shaking as they set down the offending paper. She grasped at the first letter like some sort of desperate mother for her child. Though on second thought, the analogy was the other way around, really.

Some sort of desperate child for her mother.

It was packaged in a neat little tri-fold, formal and crisp even after fourteen years, the paper thin and slightly yellow. Delicate, like she imagined her mother to be. She stared down at it, her hand drifting to unfold it.

A spidery scrawl looped across the page, a heavy dark ink. It was a wonder it hadn't bled through. Ebony steeled herself and started to read.

_Dear Isabella, _

and then Ebony stopped, shocked. Isabella was her middle name, for all purpose and intent, but it was seldom used. The only way she knew that she even had a middle name was because she had once caught sight of it on her birth certificate.

She shook herself and continued on.

_I know, I know. It's your middle name, and I should call you Ashland, shouldn't I? But it's such a silly name, I think. It should've been your middle name, and Isabella your first name, but it's a tradition in this godforsaken family, apparently. I got to choose Isabella, you know. _

_So anyway. Are you wondering why your mother has left you letters? It's all rather cliché, I suppose, but I want you to have something to remember me by, when I'm dead. _

_When I'm dead. That's such a queer thing to say. The doctors only just told me that I haven't much time left for living this morning. Apparently the tumor is far into my head. They've agreed to give me five months before the illness progresses too far and then I'm cleared for some sort of pill that will end it. I guess I'm lucky in that regard - they say I'll die with something like a light cold, so my numbered days will be largely pleasant._

_Your father hasn't spoken a word about any of this. He is acting as though I will be here forever. I'm allowing him to slide by at the moment, but he can't do this for too long. He's avoiding me too, and I want to spend as much time in his company before I am forever bereaved of it._

_Well, I get off track easily, as you can see. I'm not giving you a very good first impression of your mother, am I? _

_So I suppose these letters make me feel better about everything, as well. I'm writing them for you, but I'm also writing them for myself, if that makes much sense. I'm writing and someone is actually listening, sort of, even if it's after I'm dead and these thoughts are rendered obsolete._

_I may not be inclined to write much, Bella (look, I've got a nickname for you and everything – I really feel like a mother now) but I'm going to have to if I want my child to know me, to love me as much as one can love a bunch of old letters._

_If you think about it, I'm a pretty shitty parent –_

Ebony laughed aloud at the cursing, mild as it was, more out of shock than real amusement. It was so _casual, _so ingrown into her mother's language, and spoke volumes about her mother's spirited nature. Her father didn't tolerate cursing in the least, and she had never quite understood the logic behind the practice as well. But she lowered her eyes to the paper once more, and continued to read –

_If you think about it, I'm a pretty shitty parent, because I mean, I won't be there to help you maneuver your way through life, will I? And that's what parents are supposed to do, not just give birth to their child. They have to stay and help the kid stand and take the blows for them until they develop a skin thick enough to do it themselves._

_And I can't do that, because I'll be dead. _

_Listen, Bella. I know I'm horrible. You'll probably hate me for dying on you. You won't have a mother to help you and love you and cherish you, and it's a bit much to expect your father to do that for you because, well, he's not much for emotion. That's what children need. That's what you will need, and that's what you won't get. And I am sorry. _

_I will always let you down. I will always be incompetent. But let it be known – let it be known that I tried, and these letters are my attempts._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Elspeth Wells Ebony_

Ebony sat back and lifted her head slowly, letting the paper fall from her hands and drift to the floor.

Ebony hadn't known much about Elspeth Ebony. Her father had talked about her only once a year, every year on January 17th, his wife's birthday, and even then, he said seldom little. That was the only time every year he would willingly talk to his daughter, and each year he would tell his daughter one small story (she thought of them as snapshots of her mother) about Elspeth.

To hear her mother in her own voice was something else entirely, however. Bit of an information overload, but Ebony was, somehow at the same time, hungering to learn more and afraid of that very same thing.

Her mother was fantastic, everything and even more than what her father and the staff at the Ebony mansion had ever told her, could have ever told her. She was quite the opposite of her father – spirited, free, sarcastic, funny with a self-deprecating sort of humour, intelligent, and all of that without being mean-spirited. In a nutshell, she was brilliant.

It was strange to think of a woman like that falling in love with Dr. Charles Ebony – a man who couldn't bear to look up long enough from his business numbers to make sense of what lay in between all those numbers, long enough to know his own bloody _daughter – _and it was strange to think of him falling in love with a woman like that. A woman who couldn't be controlled. A woman who couldn't be put to numbers.

It made her realize that her father could be mortal. It made her realize that her father could be _mortal, _could love another with the utter abandon of a far more human soul than his, and yet, he couldn't –_ wouldn't – _love her.

Maybe that's why he had loved her. She presented him a challenge – something that couldn't be solved with a bit of figuring and measuring and fancy calculator work. A puzzle. Maybe the enigma of her brilliance, the mystery of her curiousity, was so beautiful to him that he couldn't help but love every bit of it… even if he didn't understand any of her.

And maybe that's why he didn't love Ebony, because she was so easy. She could be figured out.

She wasn't a shadow of gray in a black and white world, like her mother had been.

Ebony furtively consulted the paper again, letting her eyes rake across the hurried scrawl, so weirdly like her own. She wrote in print – much to her father's chagrin, who had tried many times to force her into the Ebony way of loping cursive, but it had ended up looking like a monkey had tried its hand at Impressionism, so he had given up early in.

There were no pauses in the script, unlike the more recent letter Mrs. Brixton had written. So at one point privacy had been a real concept in the Ebony mansion. How peculiar. The handwriting seemed shaky in the later paragraphs, and even years later the paper seemed wrinkly in places – remnants of old tears. Ebony imagined them splashing onto the page, gravity forcing them onto the smooth paper, carving a path down her mother's silken cheekbones. She had cried.

She had cried for her daughter.

Ebony pushed on past that, her eyes trailing down the page and stopping to rest on the very bottom:

_Elspeth Wells Ebony_

She knew that _Wells _was Elspeth's maiden name. There was a smudge of ink from where her hand had rested, pen poised over the page, before slashing through it and writing _Ebony _next to it. She had to think about writing _Ebony _instead of _Wells. _So she hadn't been used to her new last name yet – probably hadn't liked changing it.

And for some reason, Ebony felt a sliver of sympathy for her long dead mother, even though it was quite irrational.

She gave a low chuckle, the sound resounding in the empty bedroom. One letter from her mother, and Ebony admired her as though they knew each other. It was mental. Insane. Completely irrational...

But she found that she didn't quite mind.

She set the letter aside with a sigh and shifted her gaze to the mountain of them that sat before her. A smile, a bit tired and frayed around the edges (as though it hadn't seen sun for a long time), quietly found itself on her face.

There was quite a bit of work in for her, and she was over the moon about it.

She took a deep breath and started to climb the mountain.

* * *

The second letter was longer than the first, and actually kicked off the diary aspect of the letters that Elspeth had mentioned.

Ebony stopped at that thought and went over the sentence mentally. _Elspeth. _Somehow, she couldn't think of her mother as _Mom _or _Mother _or any other traditional term. She could only refer to her as Elspeth – and the thing was, she realized, no one could tell her to do otherwise. Her mother was dead. She lived on only in the thoughts of the people she had known. It didn't matter anymore what her daughter thought of her as.

The letter started off a little tentative, and she could see that Elspeth wasn't quite sure how to start. Or where. After all, there is no guidebook on how to write letters to your daughter who will only read those letters after your death. It isn't that popular of a practice, surprisingly enough.

_Dear Isabella, _(it began)

_I don't know how to begin._

_Good, glad we've established that. But really, I haven't the foggiest on how to start. When you read this, I will be dead. Fact. _

_So when you read this, I won't be around to clear up your confusion, and therefore I can't be as sarcastic as my wholesome, living self usually is. Also fact, unfortunately. Drat it all, this tumor is more of a hassle than I originally anticipated. _

_So I suppose I'll start with my day. It wasn't any different than usual. We informed the staff of my disease. Eliza cried, the poor thing. She's only about fifteen years older than me (I'm guessing by her age – she looks around forty years old) but she's been like a mother to me in the three years I've been living here. She helped me quite a bit through my pregnancy. _

_And the gardener's nephew, Freddy Wilkinson. He's such a beautiful little boy, around eight years old, and I love him so much. He didn't quite understand all the cancer talk, so I had to tell him that I'll be sick and I'll have to leave him like his parents did. That he understood quite well. He tried so valiantly not to cry. _

_It felt as though every one of his unshed tears put another tumor in my head._

_We have quite the friendship, Freddy and I. He came here when he was three because his father died and Charles was very fond of Mr. Ackley, the gardener. After I got married to your father, I was very lonely because the only person I knew was your father, and I love him very much and he was (and is!) wonderful, but only one person for company is lonely, and that's when I met him. It makes quite the story – how about we start with that?_

_I was traversing the garden alone one day, when I turned the corner and I saw a little boy staring up at me. He had the softest blond hair, like a pillow had emptied itself on his head, and the clearest green eyes, like the underside of a lily's leaf. You know, that soft pale green that never sees the sun. And we just stood there for a moment staring at one another, his brilliant green eyes to my boring old gray, until he said, sounding quite cross, "Why are ye standing in my kingdom?"_

_Oh, Isabella, if you had been there. It was so lovely, that moment. There was a little furrow between his brows, as though utterly perplexed by this question the universe had posed him, and he was completely serious, without any trace of mockery. He was _genuinely_ confused._

_"Your kingdom?" I asked, trying not to look down on him but also avoiding crouching down to his height. I know how children hate that – I detested it myself. _

_He looked left and right, then leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper that carried nonetheless. "Yes, but don't tell anyone, miss – it's called _Bryn Glas_. That means sumthin' in Welsh, my da told me." Then he leaned back and tried to assume a look of authority, though on his infantile features it looked as though he had been hit with an acute attack of diarrhea. "Now, why are ye in my kingdom?"_

_It felt appropriate to curtsy, somehow, so I did so and bowed my head, trying to look apologetic. I didn't need to, though – children pick up on those things, you know. "A thousand apologies, sir. I was only admiring the view of your beautiful gardens. It's dreadfully boring up in the house, you know, but I expect Your Majesty has more to do than worry about trifling problems like my boredom. I'll take your leave." I turned to leave, trying not to smile and give the game away._

_He lurched forward, gazing up at me. "Oh, wait, no, no! Do ye live up in the main house?"_

_I turned back to face him. "That's right. Isn't it in your jurisdiction?"_

_He stared back at me, silently mouthing the word _jurisdiction _to himself. "N-no, I dunno what the means, miss, but I'm guessin' not. Hold on… are you Miss Elspeth, the doctor's new wife?" The last bit he said with a bit of dawning horror, stumbling back as his eyes widened with fear._

_At this I felt compelled to crouch on my knees, detest it as I did, and hold out a hand to him. "Well, yes, I am, but that's all right, you can talk to me. I'm very sorry for trespassing in your kingdom. It's very lovely."_

_He gazed at my outstretched hand, then back at me rather dubiously, as though he was loathe to believe that he could trust me. I smiled at him, and then he relaxed a bit, cautiously putting his hand into mine. I squeezed it gently. His skin was very soft._

_"I'm sorry for being so selective about my subjects, miss," he said abashedly, ducking his head and grinning shyly, "but ye see, I have to keep out the ruffians. Ye can come whenever ye like, though," he said, perking up a bit._

_"Oh, no, I understand completely," I said, shaking his hand in a business like manner, and I did. After all, he couldn't admit every Tom, Dick and Harry, could he? It made total sense. "You're doing a fantastic job…?"_

_"Frederick," he said, stumbling a bit over the long name, "but my friends call me Freddy."_

_"I see," I said, digesting the information. After a pause, I added, "And are we friends?"_

_He chewed on that a moment, thinking so hard that I could almost hear the cogs in his brain whirring away. "Well, yes, I suppose. I only have two friends here – Mrs. Brixton and Cookie. Cookie makes me an extra pasty on baking day. I can get you one, if you like!" He grinned at me, cocking his head, and I felt my heart lift. He was a little boy, yes, but he was so cheerful and child-like and beautiful, and he was my friend._

_I laughed and patted his head. "That would be lovely, Freddy, thank you."_

_And ever since then I've been appointed royal undertaker of the gardens. There was a formal ceremony and everything, with crowns woven out of grass, attendees totaling three: Flopsy the stuffed rabbit, Jackie the terrier, and your father. He's a big softie when it comes to Freddy. He's a softie when it comes to me and Freddy and anyone else in this house, really._

_We have tea parties out in the garden sometimes, catering provided most kindly by the aforementioned Cookie (who makes us not only one but eight or nine extra pasties on those days) and entertainment provided by Jackie and his brother Jonny. Freddy has trained them to do all sorts of tricks. Other times we explore the grounds, armed with sticks and our woven-grass crowns and a picnic basket, and very occasionally your father takes us out on a field trip to one of the moors or lakes for a day._

_And if it's raining, we wander the halls of the house. Servants aren't technically allowed to traverse the same corridors as we are, but Freddy isn't a servant. We wander around and look at all the artifacts and sometimes we'll read in the library (or I'll read and he'll doze off in front of the fire with Jackie or Jonny) and we'll wake up to find that a plate of pastries has magically appeared on a side table, courtesy of Cookie._

_But it makes my heart ache as much as it puts my loneliness to ease, Bella, because I will never get to do that with you, will I? I'll be dead._

_ Oh, gosh, now I'm getting weepy. Dying does that. A tip from the wizened, Isabella: when you're dying, you have the license to be as weepy and sentimental as you like - the general attitude being, _sod it all, blokes, it's now or never - _and I'm giving you the assurance now that you are allowed to abuse it as much as you bloody well like. I'm loving life now that I'm dying, Bella. Is that twisted or what? _

_Then again, the very notion of life is twisted, so who am I to say?_

_Sorry, you must be getting the worst impression of your mother. I don't always act like I'm knocked in the head. Just, say, half the time? I'm brilliant at acting complacent, you see._

_I have to go now. Eliza just came up with tea and – speak of the Devil – your past self, charming even as an infant in desperate need of a diaper change. Well, somewhat charming. I can't think that way of anyone I've seen the soiled knickers of._

_Sincerely yours, _

_Elspeth Ebony_

That second letter did it for her, the complete whimsicality of it. It was that letter that ensured it - Ebony loved her mother.

She loved the way she admitted her uncertainty without any trace of embarrassment, like the children she confessed to whole-heartedly adore; she loved the way she made all these little jokes about herself, this beautiful self-deprecating humor that didn't scream for pity like most people's over-modest remarks; she loved the way other people became the star attraction of her enthusiasm, _even though _she was the one who was dying; she loved the way miniscule details that no one else would notice, let alone catalogue, became the cornerstones of her stories; and she loved her absolute brutal honesty. She was not a person; she was an incandescent jewel.

She read it over again and laughed at the sheer humanity that shone through. It was bitter, but glorious too, and it waded into the air, banishing a sea of thick loneliness that she hadn't realized was so damningly encompassing.

But she had known she was lonely – just not the extent of it. Loneliness is a monster. It eats all, without remorse or guilt, and she had not been spared.

She gazed at the paper, and set that on top of the first one. She told herself that she should probably stop, but she watched – as though she were out of herself - as her fingers crawled towards the pile, snatching up another paper.

She read that one, the words burning themselves in her mind as she raced through it. It was shoved to the side, another snatched up almost as quickly, and then another as she finished that, and another, and another.

And so it went in that spare room on Baker Street, Ebony reading the letters as fast as she could.

Reading those letters, she was nothing more than a little girl aching for her mother, trying to know her through her words.

* * *

She lost track of time. Minutes ticked by, bleeding into an hour, two hours, three, maybe more. She wasn't sure. She didn't care.

She only read.

By the time she surfaced, it was about six o'clock, and tea time had passed ages ago. She didn't mind. She had read about twenty of the letters, each multiple times, digesting the information and cataloging her mother. Where there had been only a poorly taken photograph and a few vague stories in Ebony's knowledge of Elspeth was now a wealth of information, from her childhood to her interests to her dreams and hopes and despairs.

She had stopped after she finished a letter that detailed her mother's taste in music, but only to check the songs out herself.

_Bella, you've got to give Coldplay a listen, _her mother had written, and she could almost touch the excitement in her words as they pulsed on the page._ They're this new band that everyone's been raving about since that new song _Yellow, _but I've listened to both of their albums, and _all _of it properly, and I can't tell you how much I love them. I'll give you some of my favorites. Let's see now, I've got to dig up my albums…_

_Fantastic. Okay, now. From _A Rush of Blood to the Head, _their second album, I recommend _God Put a Smile Upon Your Face, The Scientist, Warning Sign, _and most definitely _Amsterdam. _God, they're so beautiful. They're really well-crafted, all of them, and just heart breaking enough to make it seem accidental. You know those songs? The ones that talk about profound topics and they say such true things, things that bowl you over, and the singer has such an angelic voice as well._

_I loved _Parachutes _just as much, and from that I think you must listen to everything. My favorite is just a notch above the rest, the tiniest notch, and that would be _Parachutes. _I could've written it, Bella, I could've written it to you. I intend to die with those words on my breath. It speaks of everything that I wish I could do. That song is utter perfection._

_All right, then there's that song by Oasis that came out some years ago now, but I still love. _Champagne Supernova. _I think they wrote it while they were high or something, but I don't really care. There are some beautiful turns of phrase in that song. It is rather long, but. Still. That chorus is haunting. And who can resist that careless dream of the champagne supernova, the brilliance that the words evoke in one's mind?_

There had been loads others, but those were the only ones that had warranted such high praise, and those were the ones she dropped everything to listen to.

She clacked away at her laptop until she found all of them online, then settled down to give them a listen in the order that her mother had listed them.

Elspeth was right – Coldplay really was something. But she was surprised at her mother's taste in music. They were so dark, so cynical and sorrowful. It showcased her moodier side, the one that sometimes manifested in her letters when describing the humdrum events of her life, but even then Ebony wouldn't have thought her mother to listen to such music. Where the Elspeth Ebony of pretend tea parties and whimsical children stories in the moody twangs of _God Put a Smile Upon Your Face, _in the stark piano of _The Scientist, _the reverberating guitar of _Warning Sign, _the wistful keening vocals of _Amsterdam?_

She loved each and every one. _God Put a Smile Upon Your Face _had hints of dark amusement, an almost jeering note, that brought to mind her own dark humor. _Warning Sign _made her heart twist with its gut-wrenching pleas for someone; it was a pleasant sort of heartbreak, if that made sense. _Amsterdam _reminded her of… herself, with its alternating outbursts and almost-sobs, desperation creeping its way into the words.

And _The Scientist_, well, it described Sherlock. The whole song was him trying to make sense of it all, this circle of life called emotion, and it was Sherlock down to the ground. A cold, abhorrent mind, to which emotions are a nuisance, trying to make sense of what his own heart feels. And though it wasn't love he tried to break down to a science, like the singer did, Sherlock tried to do that with everything and anything he felt.

_Questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart – _the singer sounded distraught, almost horrified at the stark reality. That was the only thing that didn't fit: Sherlock would never say that questions of science were less important than the heart. Unlike the scientist, he saw it in others, but refused to believe it in himself.

She hesitated to listen to _Parachutes, _reading again her mother's description of it. Best for last, then. She clicked over it and started off _Champagne Supernova _instead.

Again, Elspeth was right. It started off slow, a simple beat of rustling. Electric guitar, one or two twanging chords. And then the nasal shade of the voice, that glorious voice started to sing. All she heard was that haunting chorus: _Someday you will find me, caught beneath a landslide, in a champagne supernova in the sky. _The voice rose, keening as it hit the line's crescendo, then continued in a wistful tone. There was a slight downturn, a quintessential Manchester inflection, on the word _supernova _that added to the song's impulsiveness, its fantastical element.

It was her favorite, until she listened to Parachutes.

It was literally a nothing-but-guitar-and-voice song, just two verses of strumming with minimalistic lyrics, as short as _Champagne Supernova _had been long. And yet those minimalistic lyrics were exactly what her mother had told her they would be: 46 seconds of perfection. The song began tentatively, soft, but it was a good beginning, chords that made the guitar's strings hiss – and they were mistakes, but they were perfect as well. The hisses were like the guitar sucking in a breath, one surprised breath as he sang his promises so boldly. They made it human. It was a human song. And then Chris' angelic voice, soft, steady, one that promised support like a rock:

_In a haze, a stormy haze_

_I'll be round, I'll be loving you always_

_Always_

And usually _always _was such a pathetic word in Ebony's eyes, the concept of never leaving someone so utterly fake, but from this man's lips, the quiet conviction she heard in him as his instrument and voice sang in pure harmony, it seemed real. The honesty of it shattered.

_Here I am and I'll take my time_

_Here I am and I'll wait in line always_

_Always_

His voice was so quiet, cradling. She could lose herself in it. She played it over and over and over until she could almost physically _feel _the words making a home for themselves in her head. The promises were so real, so simple and pure. She wondered how any human could say such a thing, how they could really mean it like this song did.

And to her surprise, she believed it.

She sat back and closed her eyes. Swallowed once or twice. Her mother loved this song. Her mother believed in this song, and she was such a good person. If Ebony could believe it without a beat of hesitation… didn't that make her a good person too?

But before she could explore this startling option too, she heard a bang from behind her. She quickly sat up and closed the laptop, shoving it off her lap as she twisted around in alarm.

Mrs. Hudson was standing there in the kitchen, behind her. She looked utterly leveled as she took in the mess of papers, her back straight and positively radiating shock. A tray of food lay smashed on the ground, where she had obviously dropped it.

Ebony stood up, feeling a bit sheepish; as if she had been caught doing something horrid, though nothing had really happened.

Mrs. Hudson's eyes widened as they fell on the memo from Mrs. Brixton that Ebony had carelessly thrown onto the table in the kitchen. As she skimmed it, her hand crawled up to her mouth, and she made a strangled sort of noise.

Ebony's eyebrows furrowed, and she surged towards her. "Mrs. Hudson? Are you all right? What's wrong?"

Mrs. Hudson hadn't seemed to hear her. She closed her eyes slowly in horror, and mumbled to herself, just loud enough for Ebony to hear: "Oh, God. Oh, God, Elspeth."

A bit of suspicion crept into Ebony's mind. "Mrs. Hudson," she said slowly. "What's wrong?"

She finally seemed to hear her at this, and the older woman looked up at her. Her eyes were filled with tears.

"You read the letters, dear?" She spoke in a broken whisper.

"Not all of them," Ebony replied, also in a whisper. "Most."

She turned her back on Ebony, her delicate shoulders starting to quake. Ebony reached out a tentative hand to her, then faltered, and withdrew the hand. It was better to let her gather herself before confronting her.

After a bit, Mrs. Hudson straightened and turned back to her, her face mournful.

"Elspeth wrote all those letters to you, but she never really thought you would ever read them," she said, her voice a distant warble. "She was…" She turned away, staring at a spot on the wall with a vacant air.

Ebony stared at her for a moment, then cautiously stepped towards her and wrapped her arms around the older woman's smaller, delicate figure.

Mrs. Hudson slumped into Ebony's own petite frame and gave a huge sob, before she started shaking with the force of her tears.

And Ebony couldn't do anything except hold her, and try not to acknowledge the fact that deep down, she wished she was hugging her own mother instead.

* * *

**Right. Okay. No dramatic talk. /CANCELLED**

**Yeah, so my beta talked me through it and suddenly I realized what I was doing wrong and she is awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. Thank you so much, ScarlettSnow6. She's helped me figure out that Ebony has little substance to her and that I need to focus on characterization, which is something I cherish in a story myself, and I've pretty much sidelined that... even though I kind of knew I was doing it.**

**Okay, rambling. Writing the next chapter! Look forward to it!**


	9. Chapter 8 - Manipulation and the Milk

**Hey there! Chapter time. Ahahaha I looked back at the first AN ever and it says "I'll try updating every two to three days teehee" and now I'm like no. No way in hell. Ok.**

**So this chapter is a bit of a nothing chapter, but it's fun and adds some MUCH needed character focus.**

**I've been trying to focus on characterization because Ebony's kind of empty, like my new editor ScarlettSnow6 has told me (in the gentlest terms in the world, I swear, it's like she cannot be mean, and it's **_**wonderful**_**, thank you thank you thank you, I have to stop, I'm rambling like Molly freaking Hooper).**

**Also - do the English buy milk in cartons? Even if not… Screw the world.**

* * *

Ebony put away the letters after that with a definitive air. _Perhaps it was better to let sleeping dogs lie, _she told herself, though she knew it was really because she just didn't want to read the last few letters. They were the only details of her mother's last days that she had. She didn't feel up to reading them anytime soon.

Then she suddenly remembered the package she had so eagerly awaited this morning, the one that was still sitting in 221B - her cello.

She trotted up the stairs, not surprised to hear yelling alongside the sounds of a soap opera (it sounded like _EastEnders, _something she had spent many an evening watching with John and Mrs. Hudson), and strode into the flat. Her cello was tucked carefully underneath Sherlock's desk, away from his tantrums (Ebony silently thanked John for this).

What did meet her gaze, however, was a harried Sherlock hunched on the couch, arms wrapped around his legs, yelling at the television in exasperation. It wasn't too unusual, except for the fact that he was wrapped in a sheet and appeared to be wearing nothing underneath, and she kept on walking over to the desk. John was nowhere in sight.

She took a quick peek at the telly (yes, it was _EastEnders - _it was a rerun of the episode from a week or two ago, with that new character Andrew Cotton making eyes at Shirley) before she squatted and reached under the table to drag out her cello.

The sound of the case scraping against the floor shook Sherlock out of his latest deduction ("Of course they're not lesbian, look at their shoes!") and he twisted around to look at her. "Oh, it's you."

Ebony stopped tugging on the case and looked up at him, leaning back on her heels. "I thought you were above stating the obvious, genius. If I needed self-identification I'd ask."

His eyebrow quirked at her snarkiness. "Where were you the whole afternoon?"

She knew what he was really asking. _What was in that package that was so important?_

"Looking through the contents of the package I received."

She received a huff of breath in reply as his interest waned and he turned back to the television. Well, no, his interest didn't wane - it only subsided - but somehow Sherlock knew that this was one subject on which she didn't want to be pushed.

He resumed berating the television in loud tones and she managed to drag her cello out the rest of the way and picked it up, walking out of the flat.

As she marched down the stairs with the case, she ran into John.

"Hello, Ebony," he said, looking tired. "How's he doing?" It didn't take a certain detective to deduce whom he meant.

"John," she said, nodding at him. "He's yelling at the telly again. Who got him hooked onto _EastEnders, _you or Mrs. Hudson_?"_

"Mrs. Hudson, definitely. _EastEnders _is crap."

"Well, I hope she takes the blame for what's happening up there right now. Are Shirley and Amanda really lesbian?"

"No, it's a couples convention and Andrew won't let them in," John said without thinking. He immediately glared at Ebony as she laughed.

"See, you _do _watch _EastEnders! _Probably enjoy it too. So what were you out for?"

"Was out at Janice's house for a bit. Did, ah, did Sherlock get the milk?"

Janice was probably another notch in John's Women I Have Slept With belt, so she didn't ask. "Doesn't look like it. He was wrapped up in a sheet. Only a sheet."

John blinked, but seemed to take it in stride. Then again, Sherlock had pulled this kind of rubbish before, and probably much, much worse, so he was definitely accustomed to it. He changed the subject adeptly, nodding to the cello.

"So you can play, huh? Don't tell me you and Sherlock are going to play accompanying horrors at 2 AM in the morning. Give my poor ears a rest."

She knew it was a deliberate change in the subject, but let it go. It was a bit intrusive, after all.

"It would be pretty hard to accompany him. He saws away at that thing without any real pattern when he's thinking; he makes it up on the go, so unless we had some sort of telepathic connection…" _Look at you, Eb, making jokes to put your friend at ease. _That casual thought stopped her. A friend? John was a friend?

Yes, she supposed he was. And so, by extension, was Sherlock. They were sort of a package deal - you couldn't get one without the other. Couldn't just get John, or just Sherlock. John-and-Sherlock, Sherlock-and-John. A singular unit.

Meanwhile, John was chuckling his John chuckle (like a dad chuckle, only more hedgehog-like and with a horrible jumper as a visual aid). "He's a git."

"Isn't he?" Ebony agreed. "All right, enough of the clueless git. I've got an idea for the milk."

If John was a dog, his ears would be perked up in interest. Ah, John, it was so easy to press his buttons, watch him do everything the way you thought he would (and he was as predictable as a Baggins, it must be said). "What do you mean?"

"I've got a way for him to get the milk. How about we bet on it?"

Now John's interested gaze turned suspicious, and a little bit skeptical. "How're we going to do that?"

Ebony grinned at him, setting down the cello and leaning back on the wall in an imitation of a certain cockier detective's stance. "All you need to do is argue with him and get out of the house in a huff. All right? I can take it from there. You can do it any day, doesn't matter when. I'll take whatever opportunity you throw my way. Let's say five quid, a starting amount. Maybe more if I do it in record time."

John squinted at her, then sighed and shook his head. Ebony could tell he was about to acquiesce to her anyway. "Do I want to know?"

"Probably not."

John just shook his head. "So five more quid if it's in the next week?" She nodded. "See you then."

He looked her directly in the eye as he said this, and she saw something suddenly. A flash of loneliness, there in those brown eyes. She knew that he wasn't as lonely as before, before Sherlock Holmes (he hadn't said much about it, John, didn't like talking about himself, and yet Ebony got the sense it had been a bad, bad time) but she saw he still craved regular human company every once in a while, away from heads and explosions and clever solutions. He probably didn't even know he wanted it, and though he wouldn't give up the crazy life he led, Ebony saw that he wouldn't mind a few moments with someone else (romantic moments or not) of normality.

"Hey, John. I think Mrs. Hudson mentioned going out with some grocery man from down the street, so it's just me and you and possibly Mr. I'm-Too-Bored-For-Pants up there. How's takeout sound?"

John was already turning away from her, but he turned slightly and gave her a look of surprise when she finished speaking. He apparently had been settled in for an evening (which would turn into a sleepless night) listening to his flatmate saw away at his long-suffering violin.

"Uh, takeout -? All right, uh, basement flat sounds good. Thanks."

"Yeah. Chinese?"

"Don't want to pay, let's get it from Angelo's."

"Sounds good."

He nodded at her, gave her a half-smile, and turned to run upstairs again.

She scrambled down the stairs, trying to avoid the call she knew would echo -

"_Sherlock_! What the _hell- didn't I tell you no heads in the fridge?"_

"Hush, John, this Amanda idiot has finally realized that Cotton is interested in her. Why I can't imagine, she's an appalling person." Pause. "They all are. They should go boil their heads in fish stock. It would be far more productive than running around Albert Square like headless chickens."

There was a nameless groan of exasperation, no doubt John trying not to scream.

_Whether he cares or not, _Ebony thought to herself as she entered her own flat, _Sherlock seems to take some pleasure in flouting John's rules._

* * *

When she woke up the next morning, the first thing she heard was the bang of a door, followed by angry stomps getting progressively louder. They were short, precise, _military _steps - she put two and two together and decided that Sherlock and John had had another argument, and John was going outside to 'get some air'.

This was a perfect opportunity John had given her for their devious plan, probably on purpose.

She rolled out of bed, pulling on a sweatshirt over her jeans and black t-shirt emblazoned with the Batman insignia. She had forgotten to change last night after putting away the letters, having chosen instead to eat a pint and a half of chocolate ice cream and fall into bed.

She trooped out of the flat and stood in the doorway. Glancing down the hallway and out of the door (which John had left wide open, probably on purpose, because Sherlock hated the cacophony of the London streets) she saw John climbing into a cab, probably headed for… what was her name? God, who _cared_? The girlfriend with the spots, or maybe the nose. One of their residences. She wasn't much for keeping track of John's many romantic conquests.

The cab's door slammed shut and it sped off, John not having seen her. She yawned and made her way to the bottom of the stairs, stopping to listen intently for any noises that sounded off. Nothing. Absolute silence in the flat upstairs.

Somehow, that made her more nervous than the gunshots.

The stairs creaked as Ebony scaled them with some trepidation, still listening for any peculiar noises. She went into the flat, looking around cautiously, only to find Sherlock sulking in the kitchen table, arms crossed like a petulant child. An experiment had been smashed against the wall opposite him and he was staring at what seemed to be the remnants of a bacteria culture, all broken glass slides and green… somethings.

He didn't seem to heed her presence, but she saw his eyes flick towards her once and light up in recognition before staring back at the experiment. Ebony stood in the doorway of the kitchen, not sure whether she should speak, seeing as his gaze seemed to be mourning something lost.

After a moment, Sherlock broke the silence, speaking slowly and deliberately. "Is there something you need to accomplish here? Has John sent you up here to destroy what remains of my cultures, perhaps?" His tone was hard and sharp, sword-point-sharp, but she managed to neatly evade its stabbing reach and counteract with a jab of her own.

"No, actually, John's gone out to bang whatever girlfriend he's acquired in the last week. I came to see what all the fuss was about and maybe make you a cup of tea seeing as that's usually John's job, but it seems to be that you'd rather mourn your precious _cultures."_

She wasn't really mad and neither was he - they both knew that, but she was extending a hand to him, to protect his bruised ego. The fights he had with John didn't really hurt him at all, but when the angry doctor resorted to destroying the experiments he put so much effort into…

He shifted in his seat, finally turning his head all the way around to look at the girl that leaned in the doorway, inspecting the experiment. "… A cup of tea would not be untoward."

She sighed and stuck her hands into her pockets, making her way to the cupboard to take out the battered kettle. Sherlock turned back to the kitchen table, leaning on his skinny elbows, still looking at the experiment. "Am I expected to clean this up, do you expect?"

"Well, probably. John didn't seem keen on doing you a service anytime soon."

"But he always says one should clean up after his own mess," Sherlock argued, huffing. "Hypocrite."

"Just clean it up, Sherlock. He won't be as mad when you come back. Maybe buy him a beer," Ebony suggested, rather calmly, Sherlock thought, as she busied herself with filling the kettle and putting it on to boil.

"Why would I do that?" Sherlock said, turning and raising his eyebrows at her.

"Because you don't want him to be mad."

"How will beer help him? Wouldn't the ingestion of alcohol just make him more irritable? Or, more importantly, _irritating?" _ He had an idea what the gestures meant, probably, but she answered him anyway. After all, even with John's buttload of patience, Sherlock hadn't managed to get thrown out of the flat, so he had to have some knowledge of appeasing his flatmate.

"It's a gesture of thoughtfulness because you took the time to buy him the damned beer, Sherlock, all right?" Ebony was getting irritated, not because of the questions, but because she was trying to get mugs out of the cupboard and she was too short. She reached for them, her long fingers straining, on her tip toes. Sherlock watched her struggle for a minute before getting up and giving her two dark blue mugs.

"Thank you," she muttered, scowling up at him. He smirked down at her and went back to his seat.

"So supposing I buy him beer, but don't clean up the experiment. Will the good thing I did for him, out of the bottom of my heart -"

"Supposedly."

"-will it cancel out the anger he will feel when he sees I haven't cleaned up?"

"Are you trying to apply maths to the situation?" Ebony said incredulously, leaning back as she waited for the kettle to whistle.

"Just answer the question, Ebony."

"Formulas don't work when it comes to emotions, Sherlock. He'll probably be irritated but he'll give up because it's you and you're a clueless git who doesn't know any better."

Sherlock glared at her, but she only stared back, expressionless. "I'll have you know that I am very well versed in the area of human emotions, young lady."

She snorted and turned back to the now whistling kettle. "Oh yeah? Then why did that client run out of the flat screaming, _Sherlock Holmes is a bloody psychopath! _at the top of her lungs last week, _again_?"

He shifted again in his seat, scowling at the back of her head. He had been hoping she wouldn't bring that up. "We agreed not to talk of that."

"_You _did, sure. _I _sure as Jove didn't."

"It was a miscalculation!"

"Oh, you're a riot! What do you do every time someone talks to you, decide how much of each emotion to project? 'Goodness, this person looks like she needs some comforting! Let's search the database on how to comfort a person! Darn, miscalculated and accidentally jeered at her about her husband's death instead! All in a day's work!' You're like a computer, for God's sake."

"Darwin's sake," Sherlock automatically corrected. He had taken to using the expression almost constantly while yelling at people in his head, but he had never actually uttered it aloud. She stared at him in confusion, but before she could question him, he cut in, "And as a matter of fact, I do consider my brain my hard drive, so that's not too far off the bat."

Ebony groaned in exasperation, but instead of saying anything, she went over to the stove and began getting the tea ready.

"So, how about it? You're going to get the beer?" She pretended to think for a moment. "Wait, actually, why don't you get the milk for once? That'll send him over the moon. And you'll need some unless you want to drink this tea black."

Sherlock blinked and backtracked. "But no, I won't be able to. I'm cleaning up my cultures. You go do it."

"Don't be absurd, Sherlock, I'm a child and I haven't got any money. I'll clean up the cultures if you're oh-so-worried about them," and she gave him a stern look at this, knowing full well that he wasn't. He didn't even try to pretend that he wasn't, the bastard, staring back at her with an even gaze.

"Now go! Unless you want to find some way to appease John on your own, and you want to be labeled an asshat in his mind."

"I'm probably already something of a so-called asshat in his mind, so your argument is inval-"

"Fine, then go without tea for a week, because John will be mad and he will not make you tea."

"Mrs. Hudson will make me some." He said this as though it was a given fact - which, Ebony reasoned, it was. Mrs. Hudson was always insisting that she wasn't the housekeeper but actions speak louder than words and to any outsider, that's exactly what she was.

Well, time for desperate measures. The way Ebony saw it, John yelled at Sherlock, and threatened him, and pleaded with him, and tried to strangle him - but in the end he always got the milk, because he wasn't ready to stoop to the levels needed to make Sherlock move.

But Ebony, of course, had no such inhibitions.

"…Sherlock. Will you get the fucking milk or will you get the fucking milk?"

"You just gave me two identical options."

"I am aware of the fact."

"You're not making sense. Your teenager logic escapes me."

"Well, all right, then. You're a scientist. I'll speak to you in plain figures." Her voice was laced with sarcasm, so heavy that a harsh Scottish brogue came up in her voice, a product of her mixed accents.

"Listen. John's going to be mad at you, yeah? And if he comes back to see that you got him milk, he'll be a bit surprised that you got him _something_, like actually made the effort, got out of the flat, tolerated other people's idiocy -" (she was purposely making him sound like a martyr in order to get him on her side, and it seemed to be working; applying to his vanity and hatred of idiots made him bend quite easily) " - you know, stuff like that. But if he then sees that you didn't clean up the experiment, he's going to think that you only got him the beer in order to appease him, and then make him clean it up. Which was your plan," she added, tucking a wisp of dark hair behind her hair, and somehow she managed to make the movement very threatening as she stared at him darkly. Then she continued.

"And then he's going to think that you think him easy to manipulate, because all you're doing is tossing him a bone and then ordering him about while he's in a good mood, like some kind of dog, or experiment or something. And _that_ will translate into him thinking that you don't think him a good friend or anything and only a valuable asset, something to order about. So to answer your earlier question, no, the good points you'll receive by getting him the beer will not get you points enough to override leaving the bacteria for him to clean. It'll cancel them and then add some horrible vibes on as well. He'll think even more rotten of you."

Ebony could see him turning this over in his head, the cogs working overtime inside that gigantic mind, trying to understand how it all worked out. "So you're saying that basically, he'll be mad because he'll think I manipulated him into cleaning up the bacteria with the beer, and so the gesture will be useless _unless _I clean up the experiment _that he destroyed?_"

"Well, when you put it that way, it sounds all defunct, but essentially, yeah."

Sherlock's face screwed up momentarily in disgust, then reverted to a state of complete contempt.

"I would've thought John well above this claptrap." Then he perked up slightly. "Look, why don't I just leave it all alone? I won't get him anything or clean up the experiment like usual, he won't think I'm manipulating him, he'll be mad like always, etc, etc." He began gaining momentum as he spoke, eyes lighting up, hands beginning to wave around and dismiss any notions of being _kind _- but Ebony cut him off quickly. All right, time for a little manipulation, in true sociopath fashion. Usually that kind of thing wouldn't work on Sherlock, but John was his weak spot, his heart. It just might work if Ebony prodded him in the right places.

"What? No. Sherlock. _Look." _The urgency in her tone made him take pause and look at her again. "You know that John has bunked three dates in a row with Janice in order to take that case, The Speckled Blonde?"

"You read his damned blog too?!"

"I watched him write it up, don't attack me now! The point is, his relationship's on tenterhooks. He likes this one, you know, more than just a casual shag -"

"Oh, save it!" He snapped at her, banging the table suddenly. "It's not my fault he decided to schedule all those dates and then cancel them to schlep around on my cases." He looked more than a bit moody, and - dare she say it? - she could make out the slightest hint of remorse in his eyes.

"And it's not, it's not," she said, in a soothing tone, "but look, you know this all as much as I do, don't you? You read their relationship status in him, haven't you?" He remained silent despite her appeals to him. "And you _know, _you've deduced it, he's probably over there getting dumped because of you, _even though it's not your fault!" _ she added hastily, seeing him twitch and open his mouth to argue. "He's going to be slightly broken up about it, at the very least."

She was about to say more, but he cut her off. "And then he will come home to me, his '_arse of a flatmate' _as you would be fain to say, and all he will want is a cup of tea and there won't be milk for it and he'll have to deal with me and my callousness regarding the destruction of my experiment, and he will be utterly spent. Is that what you mean to say?"

Ebony stopped and blinked at him, taken aback by his newfound knowledge of the human mind, but then remembered that to be able to properly deduce people, one would need to know to some extent how others thought. The same held true for the subtle manipulation Sherlock employed sometimes when necessary.

She was aware that her jaw seemed to be hanging. She shut it before he could start laughing at her.

"Well, yes. That's essentially what would happen. Perhaps less so because John is used to you, but if you just got the milk and cleaned up, you could save him a lot of headache."

Sherlock took in a deep breath, his eyes closed. She could see him deliberating, and leaned back against the counter to wait. His eyes snapped open a few seconds later; he exhaled sharply. Final decision - _indecisive._

She had just the thing to make him decide.

"I'll clean up the experiment for you," she offered. Sherlock's eyes alighted on her, examined her, and confirmed that she was telling the truth.

"Well, the proposition seems to be sensible," he said, getting up and crossing the room to get to his coat and scarf. "I'll get the milk and you clean it up. Right, that's good." He pulled on his scarf and nodded at her. "I'll be off." But then he stopped.

"And I know when I am being manipulated. You are admittedly masterful at being a subtle _Machiavelli_ but then again, I'm better." He smirked at her widened eyes and slightly guilty countenance and left.

As he flew down the stairs, he stopped and called back, "A _child _who can't buy milk shouldn't curse so much, you know!"

Expecting this to be the last word, he turned and made his way down the stairs - but he heard a very faint yell, and stopped to listen. "And an _adult_ shouldn't throw so many bloody tantrums, but does that stop you?"

He fumed all the way to the shops.

* * *

As soon as Ebony heard him leave the building (the door slammed with a very prominent _crash, _very Sherlock-esque) she rustled out the cell phone John had given her for her birthday and called him.

She stretched out in Sherlock's armchair like a cat, grinning at the ceiling. Enjoying the spoils of her victory. Of course, if he caught her lounging in it (and he would, probably deduce it from the exact measurements of her rear end's imprints on the seats or something) she was dead.

He picked up on the first ring. "John Watson."

"John, Sherlock went out to get milk_. _I won, I told you I'd do it. You can come back anytime. Thanks for the opening, by the way. I dunno why you think it's so hard to get him to go out, because all I did was press his buttons and off he went like his pants were on fire."

"What? No. We only got the bet on yesterday, how did - I've been living with him for eight months and he's never once gotten the milk!"

"You don't use the right methods, John. And also, next time, could we tone down the argument? I had to promise to clean up the cultures in order to get him out of the house. I don't even know what that green stuff is, looks like mutated _E. coli _to me."

"Next time I'll just throw his violin at the wall. Problem solved."

"And I think I'll help you with that. Thanks. …By the way, where are you? At, er, Janice's?" Ebony felt a glimmer a pride at remembering the girlfriend's name.

"I got kicked out when Lestrade called and I answered, so I'm sitting on the bench in front of her flat."

"A certified A-level creepo, that makes you."

"Lestrade called me a needy bastard."

"Yeah, well that too."

"Right, see you later then?"

"Yup." She put the phone down and turned to the shitload of green substance still coating the kitchen wall.

"Okay," she said aloud, sounding as intimidating as one could to a load of bacteria. "I don't know about you, enigmatic green stuff, but shit is going to go down when I find some bleach." There was a pause as she realized something.

"Mrs. Hudson's going to have a heart attack. Oh dear."

Another pause.

"And then she's going to skin me."

Yet another pause, slightly more pregnant as she considered something else.

"And I'm talking to myself and some green bacteria. Probably not what Mrs. Brixton had in mind when she mentioned making real friends."

* * *

About thirty minutes later, Sherlock entered the flat, looking heartwarmingly (not really) domestic, his arms laden with about ten cartons of milk. He dumped it all on the floor in front of Ebony, who was playing Call of Duty on John's laptop and eating chocolate ice cream. She jumped at the _crash _that resulted, and glared up at him.

"There, your _milk. _Frankly I think calcium is overrated -"

"That's because you're a lanky giant who would've grown regardless of the damned milk!"

"-but John requires it." He looked down at her, probably expecting some praise, the accursed man-toddler that he was. Obviously the minute bit of concern he had shown for John's mental wellbeing had evaporated.

"Good job. Now put it in the fridge. Or do you need me to show you where that is? Should I draw you a map, in case you cannot operate the maps application on your phone? I'll make it easy, I _swear." _It was an exact, almost verbatim version of the derision he had thrown her way the first time she had ventured into the morgue. She had been there a few times since, as Mrs. Hudson had given her permission, but she still hadn't had a chance to throw the words back into his face. She had been biding her time, like a dragon sitting on its hoard of gold.

His eyes narrowed at her, and they glared at each other for a few moments - the electricity of the tension almost crackling up and down Ebony's spine, it was so palpable - but eventually he complied to her (not out of respect or anything, merely because the milk was spoiling, or so he told himself) and lugged the bags to the fridge.

"By the way, the next time you actually manage to fool me into getting milk, don't call John immediately after to gloat," he called from the kitchen, almost casually. Ebony froze just as she was about to press down on the trigger. An enemy shot her soldiers down in quick succession, and she terminated the session absentmindedly in order to stare guiltily at Sherlock's back. "You pulled off the deception quite well, I must say. I didn't suspect you for a minute until I heard you calling John."

"But I heard a door slam, and your footfall patterns."

"Mrs. Hudson was wearing her heels." He turned back to her, done with the tasks, and strode over to his armchair. "Were you sitting on my chair?"

Oh. That explained it. Ebony had memorized the whole household's footfall patterns early in but Mrs. Hudson clogging around with heels always sounded a lot like Sherlock running around on a case.

"Check for eavesdroppers before you do it next time," he said, a bit gruff, obviously miffed that she had lounged around in his chair. He sat down and steepled his fingers beneath his chin in his usual thinking position. "You're much better at it than John." His eyes brightened slightly. "Maybe I can use you on one of my cases! Strictly for cases that need some sort of little girl role to be played."

Ebony glared at him, bristling. "I am not a little girl!"

"You look like one."

She couldn't deny that.

Downstairs, they heard a door slamming and John's footsteps; it was undeniably John this time - he always wore the same kinds of leather shoes, brown and solid and very Dr. Watson. Sherlock and Ebony sat up at the tone of his voice calling out a greeting to Mrs. Hudson.

He appeared in the doorway a few moments later. He didn't see Sherlock at first, striding over to where Ebony sat and pulling out his wallet. "All right, here you go, ten quid, like we agreed-" He looked down at her and stopped at the look on his face, his hand pausing where it was placing the money in her hands. "What?"

Sherlock spoke from behind him, his low baritone making John jump.

"Oh, I didn't know there was money involved. You've been adept at keeping things from me, Ebony."

Ebony stared at up John with a sheepish eye. He had a stricken expression on his face, and she saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed and slowly turned to face Sherlock.

Sherlock looked very amused by it all, resting his chin on the steeple his fingers formed, peering up at John from underneath his eyebrows.

"How…? Oh, never mind. I should've known you would figure it out." There was a beat before John said, the hopeful tone in his voice almost heart breaking, "Did you get the milk though?"

Sherlock turned his head, a slight scowl in his eyes, obviously miffed at the solid evidence of his being duped. "Ten cartons. In the fridge." His eyes flicked to John's astonished face, his head not moving, judging his reaction to the next few words. "You broke up with… Jenna?"

"Janice."

"Yes, yes, Janice. So." His gaze narrowed in on John's face, detailing and cataloging his reaction.

John's look of astonishment melted into one of pleasant surprise. He was evidently touched by the placating gesture on his seemingly apathetic friend's part. Sherlock glanced at Ebony for a moment, who only gave him a ghost of a smile, and he lifted his chin - a slight nod, an acquiescence that she was right.

And they both looked away.

John was now walking over to the fridge, a little gingerly, as though expecting it to blow up in his face.

This irritated Sherlock, who immediately snapped, "It's not like I habitually lace my milk with bombs, John, go ahead and open the door!" Then he sat up straighter. "Although, _there's _an idea…"

Both Ebony and John said a vehement _"No way in hell!" _to this in unison.

After a moment, Ebony added thoughtfully, "How would you manage to put the bombs in without exposing the milk to the air and causing it to start spoiling?"

And so if someone had been peeking in on that night in September at 221B Baker Street, they would've found a girl and a detective arguing about milk and bombs, and a long-suffering doctor trying to drink his tea.

There might've been a few books flying around as the debate went on, but that's a story for another time.

* * *

**Aw man, did I have fun with this chapter. It was so light compared to the other chapters and now that I realize that I was following so many clichés with OCs in Sherlock fanfic (mysterious OC with a Past, caps letters yo, deduction-y like Sherlock, etc etc.) I can actually write a good story. The story before this was utter crap because I didn't know what I was doing trolololol**

**Did you catch the Martin Freeman reference? And the blatant Hobbit reference? I'm proud of that one. If you didn't get it, in **_**The Hobbit**_** Tolkien states that "anyone could predict what a Baggins said before he said or did it" - paraphrasing here, but you get the idea. In Sherlock's world, with all these intelligent mentalist-type people (GO PATRICK JANE!) John is as predictable as a Baggins.**

**AND THE SMAUG REFERENCE! I love **_**The Hobbit**_**, sorry. In case you didn't realize... the Smaug reference was the 'sitting on a hoard like a dragon' thing.**

**Until next time!**

**~flies off~**

**~or tries to and falls off St. Bart's and fake dies~**

**~or at least tries to and then accidentally actually dies~**

**~then resurrects self weeeeee~**

**~then actually leaves because RANTING~**


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